On the Slow Path
by Haleine Delail
Summary: What would have happened if Madame de Pompadour had not saved the time-travelling fireplace from when she was a child? This story explores the Doctor's possible next steps, had he been truly caught on the Slow Path after crashing through that mirror on a horse. His relationship with Reinette, how he spends his time, how he might go about getting back to his TARDIS...
1. 1759-1764: Life With Reinette

**Hello friends! Again I'm taking a brief break from my Ten/Martha M.O. in order to explore an idea that's been scratching at my brain. (Though rest assured, I do have a Ten/Martha outline more or less finished and sitting on the runway, almost ready to fly! ;-) )**

* * *

 **This is one of those things that I could sit and revise over and over until my typing fingers bleed - it may never be right. So I went ahead and took the plunge and posted! Like a lot of the things I've written, this is "experimental," and I have no idea how it will be received. Except, I'm pretty sure it will attract a different audience than my previous fics.**

 **My intent was for the narrative to be beautiful, melancholy, to convey love, a sort of opulence, a bit of despair, and a slow but richly-coloured passage of time. All this while still retaining the Tenth Doctor's voice! As usual, I'm not sure if I achieved what I wanted. That's where you come in! Leave a review with your thoughts!**

 **To me, the question of what the Doctor would have done if he _really had_ got stuck on the slow path with Reinette has always been a tantalizing one, but I've avoided it because I usually do avoid writing fics from the Series 2 era. But as you may have noticed if you've read my other fics, I'm a bit of a Francophile (I've literally devoted my life to my Francophilia), and this fic was just begging to be written! It's been sort of staring me in the face for years, so I decided, at last, to give it a shot.**

 **I did a lot of reading before diving into this, and most historical info is, as far as I can tell, correct. I took as little creative license as possible with the events of the 18th century. Obviously, just inserting the Doctor into the events at all makes it more a creative endeavor than a factual one, but the details of Madame de Pompadour's life (and death) are as accurate as I could make them! FYI: onscreen, the King asserts that Reinette died at 43. She was actually 42.**

 **This will not be a long story - maybe 5-6 chapters. What you will find here is a lot of narrative, as though the Doctor is writing, maybe, in a journal. There's very little dialogue. But I hope, nevertheless, you can get invested in the Doctor and Reinette, and the Doctor and his dilemma. :-)**

 **Appropriately, _Allons-y!_ ;-) **

* * *

**1759-1763: LIFE WITH REINETTE**

 **The Doctor's Narrative**

 _"Qu'on ne soit présent à la Cour qu'avec un titre."_ It was an official rule, and in the corners of the Palace, for five years, I listened to it whispered.

"One must only be present at Court with a title."

Well, that was rubbish, wasn't it? Because, what the hell could I have been called? It was one thing for a person to be called King. It was another thing entirely for a person to be titled Chief Mistress to the King. But give _me_ a title? That would have approached abuse of the very concept of protocol.

The Chief Mistress is at Court because the King wishes it. What do you call the man who is there because the Chief Mistress wishes it?

You see the dilemma? Mostly, I was just called Doctor, or, amusingly, _Monsieur le Docteur_. Ah, the French!

Don't get me wrong. I got called many things. Just because there was no official title for me, that did not stop the various courtiers from trying, colourfully, to invent one. The King's Foil. The Interloper. The Whore's Whore (that's the only one that ever really hurt).

My personal favourite was The April Fish. Trust me, it was clever, even if it was meant to be a bit cruel. In French, it was rendered _Le Poisson d'Avril,_ which invoked Reinette's family name, Poisson, and the month of April, 1759, during which I became trapped at Versailles. It was, and is, the French way of calling me the "April Fool." The name indicated that, to them, I might as well have been "Mister Pompadour," and that they pretty much thought I was completely mad. I was okay with them thinking both. It made things more interesting.

Over the years, one by one, the King's official advisors had been either deposed or had died, and much like his predecessor, his great-grandfather, the Sun King, Louis XIV, he had chosen not to replace them. By the time I settled in at Versailles, the king was 49 years old, rather comfy in his authority, and had only one unofficial advisor to whom he ever listened: Jeanne-Antoinette Le Normant d'Etiolles, or the woman known to history as Madame de Pompadour. She was known to me, and to all who were close to her, as Reinette.

Reinette was not about to let me go without a fight, and couldn't have cared less whether I was titled or not. So, since there was no-one whispering into the King's ear that I should be either titled or ousted from the grounds, the farthest it ever got was the timid whisperings of, "Qu'on ne soit à la cour qu'avec titre," in the hallways, which they wanted me to hear. And, of course, the name-calling in the parlours at night, when they thought I didn't know. It sort of bugged Reinette, but most of the time, I found the whole thing actually very amusing.

* * *

From the moment I found myself stranded in 1759, there was no particular thought of immediately trying to get back to my TARDIS, which was parked in the fifty-first century. I knew that someday, I'd have to start manoeuvring my way in that direction, but the next five years I was to spend at Court with her. I did _want_ to be there, don't get me wrong, but mostly, at least initially, I stayed because she wouldn't have me leave.

I did valiantly manage to pass that time, my first five years on the Slow Path, without losing my mind. In the two-faced world of Versailles, I may have been mocked behind the scenes, but superficially, I was rather a popular guy. I made an effort to be charming (not difficult for me) and unassuming (extremely difficult for me), to follow protocol as much as was possible and/or non-ridiculous. I taught the more amenable courtiers card games that I probably shouldn't have, told them stories that I _definitely_ shouldn't have, and gave them enough gossip to chew on, that in spite of themselves, they wanted to keep me around. The Queen, the adorably Polish Marie Lyszczynska, seemed to like me, which did help my case a bit. She wasn't particularly clever, but she was, actually, _genuinely_ , very, very nice.

The children of Versailles were numerous, and they were both tragic and fascinating. There were _a lot_ of kids running about. I liked them, and actually interacted with them, in a time when it wasn't considered quite normal for a grown man to enjoy the company of children. The King and Queen had four small grandsons at that time, who were the children of their son, the Dauphin. The actual total number of grandchildren... I have no idea.

The eldest was named Louis-Joseph, whom everyone assumed would become the next Dauphin, and then King someday himself. Lots of pomp and circumstance surrounded this seven-year-old when I arrived. But sadly, I knew that this boy was not destined to be a Bourbon King. I knew that over the next couple of years, I would be an indirect witness to a slow decline of his health, a botched surgery by a well-meaning, but born-in-the-wrong-era doctor, his paralysis and subsequent death at the age of nine.

My interest was in the five-year-old Louis-Auguste, who would be the next King, Louis XVI. I talked with him, watched him play, and felt a kind of awe seeing the future husband of the storied Marie-Antoinette running about in the dirt. I also felt a very heavy heart, knowing that he would mark, more or less, the end of the French Monarchy as we knew it, and die by the guillotine in less than thirty-five years' time.

I knew it was rather on-the-outside, but I felt drawn to him, and attempted to take the child under my wing a bit. This was, of course, without influencing him too much. I knew I couldn't school him in politics or any sort of social graces - Louis XVI had been notoriously rather timid, of not inept, in the political arena, and also as a man. He had been a passable hunter, though, and probably a decent (or at least not a total failure as an) athlete. So I showed him and his favourite playmates how to play Cricket. He wasn't great at it, but he liked it, and it made him smile. That was all I really wanted to see.

You know, now we're talking about kids, let me just take a bit of a B-road and discuss something that I _never_ got used to, not in all that time stationed at Versailles: I witnessed (again, indirectly), the deaths of countless children, at startlingly young ages, of startlingly simple and _preventable_ diseases and catastrophes. For the sake of their parents, I wanted to help. For my own children that I had lost, for the two children Reinette had lost, I desperately wanted to intervene, and at any other place and time, I might have tried, at least once in a while. But alas, late eighteenth-century Versailles was not a place to go meddling with who lived and died. One cough out of place could change a whole generation of the Monarchy. And headed toward the Revolution in just about thirty years, and the line-of-succession inextricably connected with all births and deaths at Versailles, there could be no child Duke nor Countess nor Archuchess living a single day less or longer than expected. It could send the wrong man or woman to the guillotine when the time came, and _no one_ was ready for that, least of all, me. It was a great exercise in restraint for me, white-knuckling it through death and decay, and just _letting it happen_. It was good practical experience for me, a Time Lord who had sworn never to interfere, but who had always been really useless at keeping that promise.

* * *

Reinette was, as you probably know, an enthralling woman, in just about every way. The weight of five years together could not diminish that. Being "trapped" with each other was something of a boon, in spite of the difficult position it put me in, because in all the times throughout her life that we had met, we had never had the chance to get to know one another properly. To her, I was the mysterious "Fireplace Man" who would turn up at unpredictable intervals, and then dash out just as unpredictably. To me, she was a project - a human who needed rescuing from a horrible death. There had not been time to develop anything much more than an infatuation.

Well, she was a lot more than a project, of course. She was an object of affection, intrigue and, yes... lust. I knew I was the same to her. And suddenly now, we had _time_.

And the fact was, by 1759 when I settled in, she had not been in a sexual relationship with the King in almost a decade. Not to say that he never displayed any jealousy, but he seemed to feel that by this stage, he had no particular claim on her. She was his best mate, and he genuinely just wanted her to be happy. He made an effort to be nice to me, and for the most part, he was perfectly pleasant toward me. He was, considering that he was a European Monarch and I was sleeping with his Chief Mistress, a gracious man. Reinette never really let go of him, nevertheless, and vice versa; though, unfortunately, after having suffered two miscarriages with him, she felt their union was cursed, and she lost any carnal enthusiasm she had for him.

But now she had me.

We didn't spend twenty-four hours a day together; she had official duties and historically important hobbies that took up a great deal of her time. Some of those were the days when I tittered in the parlours with the idle courtiers and played with Louis-Auguste and his mates (even though everyone thought it was weird). Sometimes, I slipped off by myself in the Palace grounds and meditated, or just sulked a bit. I even had my own little lab in the bowels of the Palace (a consolation gift from Reinette for Christmas, 1759)... more on that later.

But there were plenty of days when Reinette and I could just be the life-long friends that we had been, at least from her point of view.

Back in their heyday, the King had taken Reinette with him frequently on the hunt, and she'd got good at it. She insisted on gathering parties from time to time, and teaching me the practise. I found it rather relaxing, actually, though of course, I never killed anything myself, and did not relish watching anyone do so. It was simply fascinating for me to observe the packs of dogs and the horses that followed, the circling of the hunters around the target. I considered it a scientific pursuit, observing privileged humans as they intellectualised the hell out of a basically primitive act.

And we talked. A lot. In parlours, with one another and with friends. On horseback on the grounds, off the grounds, walking about in the gardens. When we were alone, I would tell her stories of time and space, as she was fully aware of who and what I was. We read some of the same books, and discussed them. We talked about gardening and cuisine, fine porcelain, Franco-Austrian relations, and sometimes the King. I learned about her childhood, her short-lived marriage, her beloved, late daughter Fanfan, and her close relationship with her father. She learned about some of my recent life with Rose and Mickey, and some of my earlier memories of the TARDIS and companions. Living at Court, we both felt the need, for different reasons, to watch our step, which was incredibly stressful. It was nice to have each other as a sounding-board. I was, perhaps, the only person in the Palace who never judged her, and vice versa.

And when the sun went down... well, what can I tell you? There was a kindred ardour between us and nothing but candlelight surrounding us. _Of course_ we spent many of our nights sleepless, wrapped around each other, tangling the sheets. Wouldn't it have been a waste not to? She was _spectacular_ , and I mean that in the least-vulgar way possible. She was a loving and fervent person by nature, and well-experienced in the ways of the flesh. She had a deeply-seated melancholy that I discovered, weirdly, could render lovemaking even more satisfying. I like to think that I share those qualities. Together, we could be explosive and poignant.

Or not. Five years brought with it many variations.

* * *

Reinette had known from the beginning that I was a time-traveller, and that I had come from far in the future. She began asking me early-on about what the coming years would bring for France, for the Monarchy, for the world. I told her that the next thirty years would be crucial and bring great changes to the Monarchy, but was very careful not to use the word _revolution._ And of course, she wanted to know what I already knew of _her_ life. What had I already known when I first met her, when she was seven years old? Eventually, she learned not to ask direct questions, and it even became a joke, or a game, between us. Because mostly, I was cryptic about it, and avoided discussing it as much as possible. Rather than become frustrated, she teased me. This was a relief. It allowed me to joke and tease back, and pull all sorts of absurdities out of my sleeve to make her laugh. Better that way; in these matters, truth could be destructive.

Destructive and cruel. And extremely painful, actually. Because, in spite of the Slow Path, my burden all along had been nothing particularly new to me: I was going to outlive her by a hell of a lot, plus I knew precisely how and when she was going to die. I knew, down to the day. This was a horrible bit of knowledge to have. For the entire year before her death, I was constantly thinking, "This is our last summer together, our last autumn, our last Christmas..." And when she had her forty-second birthday, I could barely hold it together long enough to have dinner and a dance with her. I had tears in my eyes a lot of the time, which she graciously ignored, and I spoke very little. As a gift, along with other, slightly more personal things, I gave her the pamphlet, _A Modest Proposal,_ in English. I did this knowing that it would entertain her as it would no one else in the Palace, and also that she just may not have enough time left to finish an entire book.


	2. 1764: Death With Reinette

**According to my "research," when the King says, "She'll be in Paris by six," in _The Girl In the Fireplace_ , well, we'll just call it creative license. She died just after 7 p.m. and was taken from the premises after that. She was not, in fact, in Paris by six. At six, she was still clinging to life.**

 **By the way, I've noticed a few followers on this story - thank you, much appreciated! Though, if you would, please leave a review with your thoughts/feelings, etc. or just to let me know you're out there! Thank you! It's what keeps me going, as a writer. :-)**

* * *

 **1764: DEATH WITH REINETTE**

In our final February, during our short romantic-slash-business getaway in Choisy, when she began to complain of feeling tired and feverish, I saw it, and reluctantly - _very_ reluctantly - accepted it. I think I wore my back teeth down by a full centimetre, _reluctantly accepting_ it.

Oh, I could have saved her from the tuberculosis that killed her, and many times in the preceding four years and ten months, I thought about it. I spent many an hour in my little lab doing calculations, writing in journals, making webby timelines and charts of events, ultimately in vain, trying to justify prolonging the life of a major historical figure.

But even with all of my working and rationalising, nothing in my Time Lord gut told me that it would be anything other than _disastrous_ not to let her go. It was just about the ultimate exercise in restraint for me, which I had been experiencing, to a lesser extent, all along.

I wanted to rail against all of time in its infinite mercilessness! I wanted to curse the fates that had caused this cataclysm!

So, basically, I was angry as hell.

But such were the ways of the universe. It was easy to forget those ways, living as I had been, but history said that Jeanne-Antoinette le Normant d'Etiolles, the Marquise de Pompadour, died at Versailles, on the rainy evening of Sunday, 15 April, 1764.

Though, she did rally for a while. She felt better and we returned to Versailles after her week infirm. She was convinced she was done-for, and really, it was a bout of pneumonia that would be considered mild by twenty-first century standards, but that could have killed her in the eighteenth. But I knew her time hadn't come just yet. As always, I couldn't tell her too much of what I knew, but I did try to reassure her that she would live to see a few more days.

Though, she was never quite the same again. She tried to go on as if nothing was wrong, but I could see, she was weakening. She was losing weight, growing pale, having intermittent fevers along with a persistent cough, though she seemed to ignore it. It might have looked to all the world as though she had no idea what was happening to her.

I am, fortunately, not subject to catching human diseases, so I simply tried to carry on with business-as-usual, as she liked, except that I insisted on staying by her side a lot more often.

One day in late March, she spent most of it sitting weakly in a chair, talking with Monsieur Duplessis, a meeting which was supposed to take place in Sèvres at the porcelain factory, but she was too weak to travel. She wanted to commission a set of figurines for the Queen's birthday, and I said I would sit in, just because. She was too tired to argue with me.

"Madame, you look radiant as ever!" Duplessis said, after having involuntarily gasped in dismay when he saw her. He was covering his tracks... badly. Reinette looked at me with tedium, as if to say, _Can you believe this guy?_ At that moment, the denial was officially over. From there, he took her fingertips, and made as though to kiss her hand, but his own hand shook, and his lips never quite touched her.

In the late afternoon, she took a long kip, and surprisingly, that night, she wanted to make love. It had been, as you can guess, just about a month since the last time, on our second or third night in Choisy, and in light of things, I had thought we might never again. She was a bit frail, but with some rest she still could muster that old vigour when pressed to do so, so I obliged. I would not refuse her anything now.

As we cooled in the increasingly oppressive glow of candlelight, she said, evenly, "This is it, isn't it?"

"This is what?" I asked, genuinely unsure of what she meant. I'll admit that perhaps not all of the blood had returned to my brain just yet.

"I'm never going to feel well again. This illness will take me."

My eyes flew open, and I stared at the gilded ceiling. After measuring my words, I asked, "What makes you say that now?"

"I know you, Doctor," she replied softly. "If I've never known anyone else, I know you. I'm weak and ill. Why wouldn't you simply, and ever-so-gently, try to convince me to wait for my condition to improve before mussing the bedsheets together again?"

I was silent for long enough that she simply continued on without me.

"You wouldn't want to hurt me by having me exert myself unduly. Yet, you also would want me to feel as loved and attended-to as possible, if these are to be my last days."

Lamely, I said, "All things are possible, Reinette. Well, almost all."

"Please, Doctor. You know. You've known all along that this was coming, and when. I'll be dead in two weeks, won't I?"

I sighed heavily, and swallowed hard. "I'm sorry, but yes." I turned my head to look at her. "Though it will be more like three weeks."

"Will you promise me something?"

"Sure."

"Will you see to it that the figurines are finished in time to be presented to the Queen for her birthday? By your account, I will not make it to 23rd June, so..."

"I'll contact Monsieur Duplessis myself."

* * *

We had another ten days or so to be together, both in the day and at night, without interference. But after that, Reinette could no longer pretend, and the King called in doctors and nurses from Paris. Reinette's bedchamber officially became a sick room. I was relegated to a "spare" chamber on the other side of the Palace, but I would gladly have slept on the marble floor of the corridor outside her room, just to be closer. Once or twice, Reinette was able to convince the nurses (who also tended to be nuns) not to stay in the room overnight, so that I could sleep on the divan in the corner, or _not_ sleep in a chair at her side, without scandalising anyone.

During the day, I was allowed, intermittently, to see her. As were the King, the Queen, and her close friends at Court. Though they were basically incompetent through no fault of their own, her physicians rather wisely pushed away most visitors, declaring, "Madame needs her sleep." When I wasn't with her, I couldn't bring myself to leave the building, even for a brief walk. I couldn't really concentrate on any reading or study, and took no enjoyment from playing games, or interacting with the children. There was a sense of urgency about the whole thing, as if I were afraid that she would slip away forever, and that I would miss it. In reality, I knew exactly which day would be her last, and so my feelings of restlessness were more or less irrational. Well, love is, isn't it?

One night she requested, "Lay with me," after the room was empty and a coughing fit passed.

I lay down beside her, and cradled her head in my arm. She closed her eyes, sighed, and declared, simply. "This feels good."

"It does." I kissed her forehead, though it was beaded with sweat.

"Feels like it's been ages since they let you touch me."

"Yeah," I whispered, mostly because if I'd said anything else, I might have burst into tears.

For a long while, we stayed this way, and I thought she had fallen asleep. Then suddenly she opened her eyes and said, "When it's the last day, will you tell me? Please?"

"Absolutely," I agreed, without hesitation.

* * *

The following Sunday, I came through a secret door that had been designed for liaisons with the King, so as to bypass the bouncers in the hallway.

"Today is Easter, it is a Holy day. The Marquise is releasing you to celebrate the Mass at Court," I announced.

Reinette could actually barely keep her eyes open at this stage, and had no energy to grant such a release, clearly. Though, the previous weekend, only through what forcefulness she had left, could she convince her well-meaning attendants to leave her alone. Today, there was no force left at all.

I had to wrangle them into departure, but depart they did. And after sweeping out the nuns, I made my way back to the bed, and sat down beside her, taking her hand. I couldn't help myself - tears were now streaking my face, and I couldn't speak.

Through very narrow slits in her eyes, she studied me.

"So I'm to die on Easter Sunday," she said.

I managed a nod, and "Today is the last day, love."

"Thank you," she said. She mustered barely a smile, and commented, "And on the day of resurrection."

"Well, let's hope there's something to it," I croaked, after a big swallow, also trying to smile.

She closed her eyes, and just held my hand for a few minutes. On any other day, I would have been certain that she had not yet expired. Today, of all days, I was not so sure.

I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back faintly, commenting, almost without moving her lips, "I'm still here."

She had, I knew, seen the King the day before; I have no idea what was said - it was none of my business. I asked her if she'd like to summon him, and she declined, saying that she had said her goodbyes yesterday, having had a feeling that she wouldn't make it all the way until Monday. She said she knew that a King has a duty to his Court and his People on a Holy Day - he should not be bothered today.

After thinking for a few moments, she requested, "A priest, though. That's what I would like."

I was not surprised. Reinette had never been much for religion (to say the least), but history is rife with stories of people who "repent" on their deathbed, and want to purge their sins. If not for the sake of their immortal soul, then for the sake of dying with no secrets, and being forgiven in _this_ life. So I sent a page for a priest, and one of them arrived within the hour. I stepped out to let them talk. He eventually wrote down some of Reinette's confessions and recorded them for posterity, but at the time, all he would report was, "The Marquise has a lot to say."

For hours, there was a vigil. She mostly slept, though occasionally, she spoke. Sometimes to God, sometimes to me, sometimes to no-one in particular. Her friends, including the King and Queen, were outside the door that afternoon and evening, the nurses and I were in her room.

When Reinette took her final breath, the nurses were prayerful, on their knees to the left of the bed, a respectful distance from the patient. I held her right hand, felt her squeeze, inhale loudly, raggedly, then exhale. The tension went out of her hand, and she did not inhale again. It was just after seven o'clock in the evening.

I was too drained to weep. I just stared rather numbly at her sleeping face, and hoped that she was released from pain now. I even dared to hope that she might be reunited with her children, though I have no idea what the afterlife might hold.

One of the nurses stepped out into the hall to give the official word that the Marquise de Pompadour had expired.

Only the King entered the room then. I did not stand when he entered, which was a breach of protocol. He didn't seem to mind. He crossed to me, put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed in camaraderie. "I'm sorry," he said softly.

I put my hand on his, and looked back up at him. "I'm sorry for you, too."

Within the hour, the rains began.

* * *

I stood with the King and watched the carriage take her casket to Paris, where she had requested to be buried, alongside her daughter. "The Marquise will not have good weather for her journey," he said with a sad sigh.


	3. 1764: What Now?

**In this chapter, I tried to retain the same emotional tone of the previous ones. But this chapter does take quite a practical turn, both of context and tone. Perhaps this reflects the Doctor's life, at this time?**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

1764: WHAT NOW?

I did not attend the funeral two days later. It was too conspicuous, too well-remembered in history for anyone other than King Louis XV to stand and weep for her. It was still pouring raining then, and history tells us that the King stood and watched the procession long after everyone else had run for shelter. "For my best friend of twenty years," he said. "It's the least I can do."

Instead, I went to Sèvres, and gave Monsieur Duplessis the sad news of the Marquise's demise. He was not surprised, given how she had looked when he had last seen her, though he was visibly stricken. Reinette had been the major proponent of the factory at Sèvres, and without her, Duplessis would have been a minor functionary in some other no-name textiles plant, rather than the Artistic Director in his own domain. I informed him that I would be overseeing the fabrication of the figurines for the Queen's birthday, on the Marquise's behalf, because I had promised.

I disappeared from Versailles for over two months, and just stayed in Sèvres, consulting as far as I could, as Reinette had left scant instructions on how the figurines ought to look. Although, Duplessis, for the most part, understood what she had wanted, and who was I to critique the work of his factory? I knew fine porcelain when I saw it, but what the hell would I know about what Queen looked for in a set of figurines?

The figurines were finished on 12 June, and I took my time getting back to the Palace. I didn't return until 23 June, the exact day of the Queen's sixty-first birthday. In the receiving line, I was given the place usually held by the Chief Mistress. I presented the figurines to her, and told her they were a gift from the Marquise de Pompadour, who had commissioned them specifically for the occasion.

It was to be my last act at Versailles.

I slipped down to my lab and gathered anything that was "mine". I permanently undid the sonic protection I'd put on the door, and separated the papers, journals and trinkets that I would need on the Slow Path from what I would burn, as soon as I got out into the countryside.

Next, I returned to Reinette's bedchamber, which had been, oddly, left more or less the way it had been two months ago when she'd passed. The bed had been made, and all evidence of her decay and demise had been wiped clean, but ordinarily, her personal effects would have been removed by now as well. As it stood today, her clothes, makeup, keepsakes, books, journals... everything was still there. And along with it, anything that I had acquired while living there, also remained.

I found a large satchel in a cupboard, one that I had used before on the occasions when we had travelled together, and began to pack up my things. Five years previously, I'd had give up (for practicality's sake) my twenty-first century pin-striped suit and Converse, and had been more or less wearing what the other men wore at Court. Though I still refused the wig, and wore the heavy brocaded coat as little as bloody possible. But my suit and trainers came out of storage that day and got shoved into the satchel for travel, along with a few simple, inconspicuous shirts, britches and shoes.

I had some keepsakes and gifts from "friends" at Court, and of course from Reinette. Snuffboxes, miniature portraits, books, pens, things like that. Some of it I would keep, some of it I would discard in the fields later on. I didn't want to leave anything of mine in the bedchamber of Madame de Pompadour for history to find and analyse.

I was looking about the room, sorely tempted to bring something of hers with me, when the King's voice interrupted my reverie.

"I cannot convince you to stay?" he asked, almost timidly, from the doorway.

I was startled. I turned, and asked, "To what end?"

He shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I suppose, like everything in this room, I'd like to keep you as a reminder. Things she loved, things she lived with, the space she occupied in the world, the imprint she left upon it..." His voice broke.

I understood: he had ordered the room to be kept intact with Reinette's possessions.

He gathered himself, and then said. "Silly, I know."

"It's not silly," I assured him. "Her things... reminders of her. Sometimes... well, they can help bridge the gap between mourning and solace." I knew; I had just been thinking of risking a keepsake for myself.

"I know," he said. "But you're not a trinket or a piece of furniture. I can't just keep you like a museum piece. Unless you'd be willing to volunteer?"

It was an attempt at lightness, so I smiled. "I'm afraid I'll have to decline."

"Didn't hurt to ask," he shrugged, again, lightly.

Then he seemed to lose his composure with an exhale, then gather himself with an inhale.

"Right." He took a deep breath and said, "Thank you, Doctor, for making her life a little more interesting. Reinette was not wont to live in the shadow of anyone, even mine, one way or another. But with you in her life... she had real love outside of what I could give her. I always thought I was spread too thin, anyway, that she deserved more."

"Deserved more than a King," I mused.

"Much more. With you, she felt protection, throughout her whole life. When she looked at you, it was the way a child looks when she's hearing her favourite part of a faerie tale. Except you were real. All those years, I doubted her stories... but you were real."

"Yeah, well... let's not emphasise that bit too much, eh?"

He chuckled as though he understood, though I rather doubt he did. "Won't you stay, Doctor? I could find a position at Court for you. I would gladly find someone to arrange, erm, _entertainment_ for you. I know there are willing women at Court. I would, of course see that..."

"Whoa, no," I said. "No, no, no. Thank you, but..."

He put up a hand. "I understand. Reinette indicated that you would have something to get back to, after your 'tenure' here at Versailles had ended. I just wish I could convince you otherwise."

"I'd like to stay," I lied. "But I can't."

"If you will remain for just one more day, I could arrange for you to depart with Reinette's severance. I had it set aside almost fifteen years ago, in the event that she should decide to leave me, leave Versailles altogether."

"Best not," I whispered. "I'll be fine without it."

* * *

I had a long road ahead of me, because now came the business of getting back to my TARDIS, currently parked in the year 5021. When I rode away from Versailles on Arthur the horse that evening, I felt daunted for the first time since the two of us crashed through that mirror in the ballroom, five years earlier. (FYI: I've never known for sure where Arthur came from, though my guess is that he wandered onto the starship from sometime round 1745. Someone in Paris was probably looking for him... in 1745. No-one at Versailles claimed him, so he was "my" horse, for all intents and purposes, which had come in quite handy on more than one occasion.)

Over those first five years, I worked in my underground laboratory quite a bit. I thought quite often about the lot of Versailles, the lot of all who lived in the era. I inwardly cursed the sicknesses and horrible fates that befell everyone in that time period, even in the aristocracy, adults and children alike. As I've said, I thought about saving Reinette, letting her live a bit longer, advancing medical science if only at Versailles, _just enough_ so as to extend the life of a tuberculosis patient, or not allow an infant to die in his crib for no good reason.

To that end, I did calculations of time convergences as I knew them, and event fields, the threads that pull at events and existence all across time. But I came over and over to the incontrovertible conclusion that I shouldn't mess with history. I couldn't make the equations balance, or even reconcile themselves at a reasonable "answer." The equations' conclusions always landed somewhere in the neighbourhood of unstable partial numbers, which is not what we want for the fabric of time itself.

Of course, I'd known what would happen, every time I started ruminating over an equation. But I can be quite manic at times, and as we've discussed, love is irrational.

During that period, I'd also thought, inevitably, about how, after the 15th of April, 1764 came and went, I would proceed, and re-find my TARDIS, and my companions. I was destined to have a long life, and I _might_ make it that long on the slow path, but a few problems occurred to me even before retiring to sleep, on a divan in Reinette's chamber, that first night at Versailles, back in 1759.

One: I knew myself, and I knew it would be nigh on impossible to stay out of trouble (read: not get killed) for the next three-thousand-plus years. Even if I kept a relatively low profile, living a solitary existence for that long would surely drive me mad. Eventually I'd make friends, and getting involved with other people always leads to trouble - at least in my experience. Look at the predicament I was in now! I got pulled into a _thing_ with a girl in a fireplace, and later that day, _crash!_ Suddenly I'm trapped in pre-revolutionary France with no quick way back to the fifty-first century.

Two: I only had two regenerations left in me (long story), and truth be told, I wasn't sure how long one could last. I'd been able to make one last a few centuries before, but even that wouldn't get me to the year 5021. Frankly, every regeneration is different, and it wasn't highly likely that I'd live that long, even if I conducted myself like a Buddhist monk.

Three: Even if I could make it that long, I'd still have to find a way to locate, and get to, the ship in deep space where my TARDIS was parked. Sure, if I waited until around 4850 or so, I could purchase, for personal use, instruments that would do the locating for me, and might stand even a fighting chance of getting licenced to fly a private space craft. Might. But that all banked on, again, my survival over the next three millennia, and the spaceship being docked somewhere within one private-craft's fuel tank's range from Earth. Somehow, I didn't think that it was very likely. Plus, it was bound to be bloody expensive, even if I built the parts myself.

So, in fairly short order, I had come to the conclusion that _waiting_ the full 3,262 years was not really an option.

So what _were_ my options?

Well, I could attempt, somehow, to locate a Time Agent, as I knew that their goings-on were thick and swift in the late eighteenth century, given the number of important historical events that had occurred, and still were to occur, in Britain, France and America between about 1756 and 1801, that greatly affected the trajectory of human civilisation. I didn't have any information (other than what little I already knew) or databases to help me, so I wasn't sure how to go about tracking one down, but I reckoned I could use my sonic as a beacon, and eventually, one might come to me, just to find out who the hell had sonic technology in the powdered-wig era.

But this presented a problem as well. I had only ever known one Time Agent, and while he had been a faithful companion to me (whom I'd had to ditch rather unceremoniously), he had not been the most discreet and honest of men when I'd met him. I had heard tell of Time Agents playing rather fast and loose with information - a shameful state of affairs for a bunch who claimed to be spies. And, sorry to say, Captain Jack Harkness had not proven me wrong... until the going had got tough, and the Captain stepped up. But he was an individual - who knew what else the culture of Time Agents had spat out in the universe! Not to mention, they were slaves to paperwork and had to file a bunch of reports, each time they used their vortex manipulators. I did not want, again, to become part of history, I did not want the Agency knowing _anything_ about me, my timeline, my predicament, what technology I possessed, etc.

Which brings us back to the sonic. The sonic! Ah, that was a major stroke of luck! I had, fortunately, had the sonic screwdriver and the psychic paper in my pocket when Arthur and I came through the ballroom mirror. I used it sparingly at first, though I eventually found a way to use mechanical propulsion and hydraulic power to keep its electrical charge. In my Versailles lab, I had all of the cogs and bits of the clockwork men that had ceased working when I broke the mirror and severed contact with the ship. Because upon inspection of the clockwork body as a whole, I could see that any specific transmitter device was absent, I knew that I could use what the robots contained in their very "bones," if you will, (data storage, receivers, communication devices, etc.) fashioned in the fifty-first century. They might work in tandem with my screwdriver, to develop some kind of link with the future century in question. I could build on that data if I wanted. I could maybe engage the receiver or use the components for communication... after all, the sonic screwdriver is Time Lord technology that transcends time and space. It could, perhaps, bridge the gap.

Trouble was, I couldn't entirely work out exactly _how_ to use that to my advantage. I would never be able to drum up enough power to link the components so tightly with the fifty-first century, and that ship, to create a temporal shift strong enough transport my body intact through time. That was not even a question. I might be able to send information, but I had no idea how and where that information would land, how to communicate actual language and ideas, or what I would do with it if I could. I conducted experiments to that end, but again, to no avail. There was no way to know whether those communiqués were being received. And even if they were received and understood, what could the recipient do about it, from three thousand years in the future?

I did think, though, that the answer was somewhere therein, if I could just work it out. And now, I had nothing but time.

But ruminating, as I often did, over the tumult in the West during the latter half of the eighteenth century, lots of things occurred to me.

There was a an American film made in the late 1980's that featured a time-traveller who speculated that 5 November, 1955 might be the "temporal junction point of the entire space-time continuum." Well, if there were such a thing, and it had to be on Earth, I would say it's more likely sometime in the late 1700's rather than in the 1950's. The Seven Years' War, the New World, the peak of both the British Empire and the Bourbon Monarchy. The heyday of Baroque music (some of the only music from Earth that survives almost until the end of time), the American Revolution, the French Revolution, Napoleon, and all that these things implied. The fact was, though the possibility of a rendezvous with a Time Agent was problematic, thinking about them led me to the realisation that _all_ time-travellers pop in and out of this period frequently, for good reason. Even the ship that had targeted Reinette with time-travel portals had done so probably for a related reason. I still had no idea what that reason was, but my gut told me it had something to do with the temporal debris that ruminated about the eighteenth century and made the era rather like Grand Central Station for time travel.

And so, if _all_ time travellers come here a lot... well, I'm a time traveller. And _I've been here before!_

Of course! A Time Agent could not be counted on for his or her discretion, but a Time Lord could. More accurately, _this_ Time Lord could.


	4. 5021: Life Without the Doctor

**So far, this story has been about the Doctor, Reinette, Versailles and the headache of being stuck without transport in the 18th century.**

 **But as you might have guessed, this story has another side. The Doctor didn't just trap _himself_ when he burst through that mirror, he trapped his companions and the TARDIS in the 51st century, aboard a broken spaceship.**

 **I'm not normally wont to write for Rose, but once in a while, it can feel refreshing. Don't worry - I keep the mush to a minimum, I give her a dimension of maturity (or rather, I built upon the maturity Steven Moffat granted her with _The Girl In The Fireplace_ ), while still preserving the "spirit" of her feelings for the Doctor. Whether I preserved her voice... that's another question. Let me know what you think!**

 **Enjoy the 51st century On the Slow Path!**

* * *

5021: LIFE WITHOUT THE DOCTOR

 **Rose's narrative**

There are a lot of things about life with the Doctor that are just... crushing.

Sometimes the danger alone, just thinking about it can make me shudder. How many times have I been almost killed? I've been pulled into a life-and-death game of _The Weakest Link_ , and then vaporised. I've been nearly barbecued by the sun, exterminated by Daleks, blown to bits inside Downing Street, eaten by a werewolf, and all manner of other wonderful occurrences that I will never tell my mum about. What if I'm not so lucky next time? And most recently, I was kidnapped by Mardi Gras-looking robots and nearly had my precious body parts severed and used as spaceship.

It made me wonder from time to time what the hell I was (we were?) doing. No matter how much the Doctor and I... well...

Well. And then there is that. The Doctor and I. I don't know how or when it started, all I know is that _it is there._ An attachment. Attraction. Flirtation. Romance?

Love? Maybe.

Actually, no. Not full-on _love_. At least not on his end. I don't think he dares.

But the potential is there, isn't it?

I believe it is. I mean, I _believed_. Do I still believe? I have no idea anymore. And I haven't had a chance to talk to him since that night outside the café when he nearly broke my heart with the Krillitanes watching... and now he's lost, maybe forever. And there are things I need to know, because even though I have Mickey and still call him my boyfriend (it's complicated), there's me and the Doctor. We're close. Very, very close. Like, maybe-someday-sending-our-kids-off-to-uni close. At least, that's what I'd thought and hoped. But silly me, since he changed, he's been so sprightly and handsome, so youthful in his movements and appearance, his voice, his actions, his likes and dislikes, I could almost forget that he's over nine hundred years old. Sometimes I do forget.

And just as I was getting really comfy in the forgetting, there entered Sarah Jane Smith. From what I could gather from her not-so-veiled intelligences on the matter, he was _that close_ to her once, centuries ago implied on his part, but then he just seemed to abandon her without another thought. Of course I understand why - I'm not a _complete_ idiot. A man who is to live millennia can hardly hope to be close with a human being without some major heartache. I get that - I really do. I may have handled it like a spoiled child at the time, but sometimes I need time for things to incubate...

And incubate it did. This whole impossible human/Time Lord relationship thing - I know it's impossible. How could be anything other than impossible? But it doesn't negate how I feel - doesn't make it any easier to face the fact that I love a man who is unable to let me in completely, no matter how many of _those looks_ he gives me, that let me know he'd like to. It's just another one of the many things, as I said, that I find _crushing_ , in being with the Doctor.

Yet, as I had numerous times in the last eighteen months with this enigmatic man, I decided that the Doctor is worth it. The crushing, the heartache, the danger and the monsters.

And there was someone who agreed with me.

"You and I know, don't we, Rose? The Doctor is worth the monsters," she had said to me, accepting the terrifying fate that might be in store for her, just to know that she might get another glimpse at him in a few years' time.

As she said those words, I stared into her eyes, and had never felt so conflicted. I could easily see why the King of France would be smitten with her - for God's sake, in that moment, I myself was a little bit smitten! I could see why she was known as a great beauty, and a woman of wisdom, remarkable intellect and charisma. And that was just from talking to her - I knew virtually nothing concrete about her, other than what scant info the Doctor had given me. I couldn't begrudge her this - she really was an amazing person.

But the Doctor fancied her like mad, I could see that, even if I denied it when Mickey brought it up. And that made me want to bloody hate her.

I reckon it will always be painful for me to look back upon that day, though, not because of her presence in it - not because of the long shadow of Madame de Pompadour and her ever-so-intriguing "magic doors." Not because she, in her infinite elegance, made me feel dead common and childish at almost every turn. Not because the Doctor seemed to have found a way to deal with the fact that he was growing dangerously close to me, and it was not in the form of, "Rose, let's throw caution to the wind, and just plan to be together until you wither and die - I can take it! Let's get married and leave Mickey back at the estate!"

It will be painful because this day will contain the memory of watching him crash through a time portal, never to return. And _that_ , my friends, has been the most crushing thing of all, in life with the Doctor. Never have I felt so much concentrated despair, such swift, blinding _sadness_ , all in one grandiose moment.

Of course, it doesn't help that he did it to impress a truly impressive woman (who, have I mentioned, was not me?). But it was the loss, and not the jealousy, that I felt then. I swear.

I will remember every horrible nanosecond. The Doctor mounted the horse with that determined look in his eye, and I had the realisation of what he was about to do, and what it would mean. Sever contact with the ship - the magic doors would close. All of them!

He drove the horse back for a running start. They jumped. The mirror crashed, Arthur the horse's big white arse disappeared through a wobbly silver shimmer, then there was nothing. He and the Doctor were in eighteenth century France with no portal back to us in the fifty-first, and the TARDIS was on our side.

The real tragedy was the separation of the Time Lord from his vessel. Together, they could have rescued us even if one of us wound up in the outer reaches of the Bumfuck Wilderness, or some such. Separate, they were both rather useless.

Actually, that's not entirely true, as I would come to realise.

In those hours following the Doctor's departure, lots of thoughts occurred to me - most of them wrought in panic, I'll admit. My stream of consciousness went something like this:

 _Oh my God, I'll never see the Doctor again!_

 _Come on, now, get some perspective, Rose, the real problem is that he'll never see his TARDIS again! Oh, the TARDIS... we have the TARDIS! But we have no pilot to fly it, which means we're stuck here forever too! Blimey, what a bastard! It's one thing flying on a horse through a mirror to save a damsel in distress and trapping yourself, but what kind of a prat traps his friends? On a spaceship in the fifty-first century, no less! No, wait, the TARDIS has an emergency protocol that will take us home - we're not trapped. All we have to do is work out how to activate it, and me and Mickey are saved._

 _But that doesn't help the Doctor. We'll have to work out a way to help the Doctor - all it will take is time. I've communicated with the TARDIS before, I can do it again. And it's not like we've got a ship full of evil clockwork men to contend with - with Madame de Pompadour gone, they had nothing to live for and shut down. The ship itself is non-threatening, and we've got food stores for years in the TARDIS. Time - it's what we'll need. I have no knowledge of how to run the console - I'll have to wait for the TARDIS to tell me, and I reckon that will be a while. At least I'm not alone... I have Mickey. Well, maybe it wasn't just a daft idea to bring him along..._

Mickey wanted to know how I was so sure that eventually, the TARDIS would tell me what to do. I told him I didn't know - it was just a feeling. I had looked into its heart. I'd felt the convergence of all time within my consciousness. I had not much memory left of it - it had threatened to burn a hole in my brain, frankly, and the Doctor had had to remove it at great personal cost. But I knew it was in my storehouse someplace. In any case I'd developed a connection with the TARDIS over time. Any knowledge I had of it was not _knowledge_ , exactly, it was just _knowing._ Not _much_ knowing _,_ mind you, but... I did feel that I had implanted information that I couldn't quite grasp, but that was definitely there.

Besides, what I was proposing was a waiting game. Standing still, living in the TARDIS, surviving until something came along. It wasn't like we had a whole lot of choice. What else could we do - call for a taxi?

* * *

About six weeks into our stay, we were surprised when another ship made contact with us, though perhaps we shouldn't have been. "Our" larger ship's communications systems were all kaput because they were connected to the ship's damaged computer mainframe... which never got fixed because the Doctor had successfully prevented the clockworks taking the head of Madame de Pompadour. But the TARDIS was still alive and well, in spite of its absent pilot. Its comm systems were still set up to send and receive (and intercept) information as it saw fit.

" _Carpathia_ to _S.S. Madame de Pompadour,_ is anyone alive in there?"

Mickey and I were playing chess in one of the parlours after dinner when we heard it. Our eyes snapped upwards and locked on each other.

"What the hell was that?" he asked.

"Dunno," I said, standing up. I spied a speaker on the wall, and reckoned it was where the voice had come from. I turned up the volume, and stood by it for another few seconds.

After about thirty, the same voice said, "This is _The Carpathia_ sending communications to _S.S. Madame de Pompadour._ Does anyone read me?"

"Did he just say, _S.S. Madame de Pompadour_?" Mickey asked.

"Yeah, he did," I answered. "Explains a lot."

"Actually... never mind that," he said, stumbling to his feet. "Let's answer the man, Rose!"

We ran down the hall to the console room, and arrived just as the third communiqué came in.

" _S.S. Madame de Pompadour,_ this is the third and final call from _The Carpathia_. If there is anyone alive in there, we need you to answer now."

"We're here! We're alive," Mickey shouted.

The receiver through which the console had received the message was a device about forty-five degrees to the right of the computer screen, where the Doctor did his best navigating. It was familiar to me; I'd seen the Doctor use it numerous times in our travels.

I pressed my palm against a green indicator light, and said, " _Carpathia_ , can you hear me?"

"I hear you," a voice said. "Are you aboard _S.S. Madame de Pompadour_?"

"Yeah, I think so," I answered.

"How many of you are there?"

"Just two."

"Two? But according to the flight manifest, your crew are seventeen total. What's happened to the other fifteen?"

"Erm, long story," I said, looking at Mickey.

"Well, engage the airlock, and we'll come aboard," said the voice.

"Yeah, we have no idea how to do that," I confessed. "Sorry."

There was a silence, then, "You have no idea how to use the airlock? What is your rank?"

"I don't have a rank," I told him. "Neither of us do. We're not part of the original crew. We're sort of... travellers. Wound up here by accident."

Another long pause. The man's voice deepened, "What has happened to the crew?"

"We didn't kill 'em!" Mickey shouted.

I elbowed him in the ribs, and then answered, "Near as we can tell, the ship fell into distress, and the droids aboard fixed it as best they could. Unfortunately, they were obliged to...erm, well... dismember the crew for parts."

Another very long pause. "We are coming aboard. We will overtake and engage your airlock remotely. Be advised, we are armed. You had better not be."

"No problem there," I said.

* * *

Captain Harry Rostron and his crew of five found us, about an hour later, standing outside the TARDIS. For safety's sake, we had locked up the blue box and stored away the key in my bra.

They came with their guns drawn, but they seemed to relax when they saw us. We weren't tensed, we weren't in uniform - to them, we probably looked like a couple of daft kids - perhaps that's what we were. The Captain asked us to state our names and origins, and then the crew members verified that we were not armed. He also wanted us to tell him what was up with the big blue Police Box, and we explained only that it was "our" humble vessel, and that, in a manner of speaking, it, too, was out of service. (We had decided before they arrived not to mention the Doctor. His name dropped in the wrong place and time could lead to disaster. For everyone.)

From there, we told them how we had come to be there, and why we were stranded. We related as much as we could, without mentioning the Doctor's involvement. This meant that we had to tell them we didn't know why the link between eighteenth century France, and us, was broken, and they didn't seem to think that was strange. Everyone sat around and listened, as though Mickey and I were telling stories over a campfire.

Rostron explained that _The Carpathia_ had come upon the _S.S. Madame de Pompadour_ on its radar (or whatever they call it in the fifty-first century) and had accessed its flight manifest from some sort of universal database. They saw that the ship was immobile, and decided to call aboard to see if anyone needed help.

"And clearly, you do," he said, picking up some of the wires and guts, hanging out of the control board of the room we were in. "Hopefully we can fix this without severing any heads or other parts."

* * *

For that week, their crew slept in abandoned bunks aboard the _Pompadour_ , and Mickey and I continued to stay in the TARDIS with the door locked. But after seven days of tinkering with the _Pompadour_ 's controls, with Mickey's help and my vital contribution of hourly refreshments courtesy of the TARDIS, Rostron announced there was nothing more they could do.

"Just curious," I asked. "Would having the brain of Madame de Pompadour have helped?"

"I doubt it," he responded. "Actually, what I mean is, any brain would do. The ship has nothing more in common with _her_ than anyone else, except the name. Seems to me the droids just got all obsessed with finding the woman herself, just because of that. Everything is black and white to them."

"Good," I said. I didn't want to think that the clockworks had been right, or that the Doctor had stranded us here to be with her, when the problem really could have been solved by severing her head. Not that I wanted _any_ head severed in any event...

"So," Rostron said to me and Mickey, rubbing his hands together in a _let's go_ sort of way. "If you pack up your provisions, we'll plan to relaunch in two hours."

"Pardon?" Mickey asked.

"We will de-dock from the _Pompadour_ 's airlock in two hours. Be ready to depart with us."

"Why?" I asked.

"You're stranded in deep space. We're rescuing you."

Later on, we laughed about it and couldn't quite work out why neither one of us had seen this coming, but in the moment, Mickey and I looked at each other with shock.

"Where would you take us?" Mickey asked, at last.

"Back to Earth, of course," Rostron shrugged.

"Oh, I don't think so," I said. "I don't think we need to go back there, thanks."

"Don't need to go back to Earth?" asked the Captain, nonplussed. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't have any other means of escape."

"Captain, we're fine where we are," I said, softly. "We don't need rescuing."

Rostron looked at Mickey. "Can I convince you?"

"'Fraid not, Captain," Mickey responded confidently. "This is Rose's show. Where she goes, so go I."

* * *

 **Thanks! Don't forget to leave a review!**


	5. 1764-1769: Jean Forgeron and the Roudins

**Annnnd, the Doctor is back. Still stuck in the 1760's, still not very well able to cope with the trials and tribulations that come from living in a time before Western Medicine came into its own.**

 **Anyway, he's got some time to kill now. Hope you'll find this interesting in its way. FYI: We will switch back to Rose's narrative at least one more time before this is over. Also, it's turning out to be a bit longer than I thought it would be. ;-) But just a bit!**

 **On with the show!**

* * *

1764-1769: JEAN FORGERON AND THE ROUDINS

 **The Doctor's Narrative**

I had turned down a chunk of money from the King. I had no idea how much Reinette's "severance" could be, but I reckoned enough to sustain the likes of me for the next nine years. Was I an idiot? Well, when I thought of the Bourbons and their spending, I reckoned I'd done the right thing. I didn't want to become part of that nasty little legacy.

Though, one of the first things that had occurred to me, upon getting stuck on this side of the ballroom mirror, was that I'd have to find a way to get money. For the first five years, I had simply lived in Reinette's "household," and was supported by her income as the King's mistress.

(Incidentally, being paid for such a position, predictably, caused the more self-righteous and cynical courtiers to call her a whore. She was never bothered by this; she had known this would happen before ever stepping foot in the Palace. Funny thing was, once she was no longer sleeping with the King, those same courtiers grumbled because she wasn't earning her money. Honestly, some people just have too much time on their hands. Because, you know, Versailles was hardly a prudish place - no one had any right to judge, probably least of all, those particularly complainy-pants courtiers. The Palace maintained an outward appearance of etiquette and piousness, but on the day-to-day, in the back rooms, in the living quarters, the whole premises dripped with indulgence; sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, buying more pretty things than anyone needed... which would eventually cost the Royal Family their heads.

Anyway, Reinette was never paid just for sex. The Royal House was paying her to be a valuable advisor to the King - eventually his _only_ advisor - and to develop arts programmes on behalf of the Royal House. She patronized and participated in theatre productions, supported both travelling troupes and in-house troupes, arranged for musical performances at the Palace, all of which helped keep the arts afloat in France, and in small part, may have helped keep a few local economies from stagnating. Reinette's biggest arts contribution was in helping to develop the factory at Sèvres, with the cooperation of Duplessis. For centuries, that factory would be known to produce some of the finest, most coveted porcelain pieces in the world.)

But I digress. Sorry. I suppose when you've loved someone who is so often misunderstood, it's hard not to get sidetracked in their defence...

* * *

The point is, for five years, I had been a ward of the Marquise, trying to be as unassuming and inexpensive a burden on the State as possible. And for centuries before that, I'd been flying by the seat of my pants, as far as finances. But now, I had to survive nine years somehow, which was not a huge amount of time for me in the TARDIS, but on the Slow Path would be a different story. I had to live somewhere and eat... and well, that costs money, strangely enough. And being working-class in France at the time? Not exactly a picnic (thanks to some of my friends, unfortunately). I had my psychic paper, which might help with some things, but it would not work here as a bank card, as it might do in the twenty-first century.

I eventually needed to make my way to the New World, but for the moment, I thought it might be prudent to remain in Europe. I really wanted to go to London and work, as it really is my favourite place on planet Earth, no matter which era, but there were two problems: one was, I had no money for passage across the Channel (or _La Manche,_ as it was known from this side of it). The other was, the only clothing I had just now was expensively, undeniably, _French_. Or undeniably futuristic - equally bad. This sort of thing would not be met with much kindness by the Brits in 1764. I'd never be able to get a job that way, and thus, would never be able to properly replace the clothes... nor find lodging, etc.

Blimey, how do people _live_ when an income becomes part of the equation? What a bloody joke.

Anyway, I went to Paris and assumed the name Jean Forgeron, and I found work in the shop of a clockmaker. I cheated a bit to get the job, but how could I not? I used the psychic paper as credentials proving a previous apprenticeship and fifteen years' worth of work experience, and I had used the sonic screwdriver to repair a broken clock I'd found torn apart in an alley, as proof of my "manual dexterity". Thank goodness for whatever enraged sort had tossed it out the third-story window.

And so, yes, friends, I, a Time Lord, made a living fabricating mechanical time pieces. I enjoyed it for a while, except, they made me wear the bloody wig for appearance's sake.

Some things were actually _easier_ for me in the eighteenth century than in the twenty-first. For example, in 2006, using a false name and not being "on the grid," not being findable on some database, would be a red-flag for most employers. If they couldn't contact anyone from your previous job or university, they'd get a little nervous about hiring you. In 1764, all I had to do was prove myself a competent and experienced clock maker, and _maybe_ not turn out to be a serial killer or a homosexual. There was no background check, no scepticism. Not for a well-spoken white man in expensive clothes, with a marketable skill, anyway.

Though, they did wonder why I was a _single_ white man in expensive clothes with a marketable skill.

Which brings me to the other reason why the eighteenth could be easier than the twenty-first century. My past. Madame Roudin, my employer's wife, had a circle of ladies with whom she took tea and biscuits just about every day in the parlour adjacent to my work area. I could hear them - they spoke Latin, which I suppose they thought would disguise their conversational topics, but I understood them, of course. And they tittered about me. They wondered about me. Where had I come from? Why was I dressed that way? What of my family? Was I appropriately pious?

At last, one day, they actually trooped into the workroom when the boss was out, and asked me point-blank: "Monsieur Forgeron, would it be horribly forward of us to ask after your family - your wife, and your children? It seems a bit unlikely that a man such as you could have remained entirely solitary for so long."

And because it was the 1760's, I actually told them the truth: I'd had a wife and children at one time, but they were all either taken by illness or war. They had no reason to doubt me. From them, I received a commiserate pat on the shoulder, they all crossed themselves and moved on, because they had heard, or lived, similar stories numerous times in their lives.

In 2006, people would make a big fat deal about it, wonder how I could live on, and why I wasn't in therapy for PTSD. They'd want to publish my story, "raise awareness," and start an internet crusade against the violence that had taken my family, et cetera.

* * *

For their own part, Roudin and his wife had three children when I first came to work there - two girls and a boy. The boy, Philippe, at eight years of age, was already being groomed to take over the clock-making someday, and he worked in the shop with us from time to time. He had an aptitude for it, I had to admit.

But Adèle and Marlène, ages ten and twelve, were, as girls of the bourgeois tended to, being groomed for husband-hunting. It was one thing to educate girls in only charm and cotillion at Versailles, but it was a bit of a travesty when it came to girls of the bourgeoisie or working-class. These girls might actually need some skills someday, and might not want to seem too high-born, come the Revolution. Depending on how they married, the daughters of clock-makers could walk the line between the aristocracy and the peasantry. Not to mention, these girls _wanted_ to learn.

I had spent all of my life around women who were _capable_. It was no accident; I never choose travelling companions who are helpless or lazy. But even back home, when I had a home, the rift between the sexes was almost non-existent (though the same could not be said of the classes). Most telling of all, even on the Slow Path, the woman with whom I had spent the last five years was probably more intelligent, better-read and stronger of heart than most of the men who whispered about her in the Palace halls. And that was _right here_ , eighteenth century France - none other. It was a little bit crushing to watch Adèle and Marlène beg to know what went on in the shop, and hear them told that the business was "the affair of men," and that they would never understand.

So what did I do? When I saw one of the girls lingering in the doorway of the shop, I ushered them in, even as their father completely ignored them, and let them watch me work. I suppose, to his credit, he never asked me to stop, nor, as far as I knew, admonished the girls for "meddling" in the "affairs of men." If he had, I'm certain they would have stopped coming. Perhaps he, or his wife, thought I might marry one of them - the eldest would be fourteen in a couple of years. Such a thing would have been perfectly in keeping with the times.

Anyway, for them, I narrated what I was doing, answered their questions, and if no-one was looking, I let them put hands on the cogs, the chains, the tools, the contours of the clock itself. More than once, I let one of the girls drop a piece into place using the needle-nosed pliers and the magnifying glass. Sure, I might have had to fix it later, but it made them ridiculously happy. They were serious about it, even if they knew that they might not stand a chance of ever practising clock-making. At least they _knew_ something now, if only for the purpose of understanding the craft that was bringing them up, and more about what their father knew and loved.

But as I well knew, familiarity breeds attachment. I laid low, kept my head down and worked for Roudin for five years, and inside that time, both of his clever daughters died of pneumonia (both at fifteen) and I was probably more devastated than was proper. Again, I _never_ got used to these quick and preventable, heart-wrenchingly _early_ deaths.

If anyone had let me, I would have intervened in these cases, even if it would have blown my cover, because their lives were not attached to the trajectory of human history. But I was simply sent away when I reported for work one morning, and received a message that night that I needn't bother reporting again until after the funeral services for Roudin's daughter. A little less than two years later, it happened again. Both times, I was naive enough just to think, _well, perhaps the materials shipment hasn't arrived yet_ , and buggered off on my own until it was too late.

So, amongst other problems, apparently, my usually sharp mind was beginning to atrophy a bit.

Or perhaps not. I may have just been looking for an excuse to move on.

So, after the death of the younger daughter, I resigned my post with Roudin, and did just that. I made it a point to find a new endeavour that included no children, and few possibilities for attachment.

* * *

I omitted to mention, one of the reasons I'd chosen clock-making as a trade, rather than, say, baking, was the venue in which I got to work. Within a few months of my diligently fitting cogs together, and not being so enigmatic as to be untrustworthy, Roudin had entrusted me with a key to the shop. I was to report for work each day at sunrise, but when I asked permission to come earlier, his response had been, "But of course - only, do not wake the household."

Since Versailles, I had been carrying with me the pieces of the clockwork men. In examining them in my underground lab, I had not found any sort of specific transmitters or communication devices, which meant that signals had permeated and resonated through, the clockwork bodies. I had, more or less, resigned myself to waiting until 1773 to rendezvous with the TARDIS, but I reckoned it couldn't hurt to try and send signals to 5021, just to see if anything would happen. Besides, it kept my brain working as a Time Lord's should. Now that I had no reason to try and solve impossible equations concerning the fabric of existence and the implications of rescuing Reinette from Consumption... well, the clockworks were my bread and butter. Literally, and intellectually.

The flat that I had found for myself was just round the corner, and I could only afford enough candles to keep from stumbling over stuff at night while I got ready for bed.

So, a few mornings per week, I came into the shop before dawn and sat, with ample candles and the sonic screwdriver (which I kept charged with my makeshift hydroelectric thing-a-ma-bob in my dark flat) and the futuristic clockwork parts. I examined their resonance, tried to measure the sonic's reaction to them, and to discern what each piece might do - namely, what sort of link I could establish with the fifty-first century. Data storage/feeds? Actual communications/commands? Again, occasionally, I tried to "feed" information into the pieces. The sonic held in it information about time coordinates (especially the coordinates for wherever it was), and so it was not unreasonable to think, provided I was right, and that some faint link _could_ be established between me and the starship via clockwork parts, that time coordinates could be fed through and maybe picked up by the TARDIS.

But it would be faint, faint, faint. And unless and until something "happened," I would have no idea whether I was correct, or just grasping at straws.

Though, I had no idea what would or could "happen." I had never tried to summon my TARDIS from this far away before. I hoped that after ten years on the Slow Path, I'd still be savvy enough to see it if anything did "happen."

And all I had now was that hope, because in 1769, I left Roudin's shop with a little bit of income saved. From then on, I had the clockwork men's parts with me, but I had no place to work with them.

* * *

 **Don't forget to leave a review! :-D**


	6. 5021: Signals

**And here again is the other side of the coin. My hope was to convey Rose with a melancholy tone. Mopey, reflect-y Rose with the Doctor out of reach... not my favorite character in the fandom. But, with certain Signals in the mix, hopefully it will be slightly _less_ mopey with a bit of a more proactive vibe. Yes?**

 **Anyway, enjoy. :-)**

* * *

5021: SIGNALS

 **Rose's narrative**

What could we do with the console room, except try and keep it clean? Tidying it up gave us a reason to be there. It was the part of the vessel that we could relate to; it was where we had spent all of our quality time on this journey. It was the "face" of the TARDIS and for us, carried the ghost of the Doctor. It's where we had adventures, when we "went" somewhere, when the TARDIS was an actual vehicle. It was a reminder of different - better - times...

And yet, the whole room was useless to us. The controls were a complete mystery, and just sat there unmoving without the Doctor's hands to guide them. The floor was harshly metal-grated, and there was only one uncomfortable place to sit. Though, Mickey or the Doctor could lounge on that stool and prop up their feet - I could not.

So I dusted the console and polished what few "shiny" surfaces there were. No sense in letting cobwebs form. I still had faith that someday she would tell me what to do next. I reckoned she'd be more likely to do that if I took care of her.

And Mickey, sometimes I forget that he's got some good, solid technological sense. He's a mechanic by trade, and a non-threatening, small-time computer hacker as a hobby. He's got a head for wires and bits and bobs, just by birth. He decided, at some point, that he might not be _completely_ hopeless at working out how the thing worked, if he dipped his head down into the area under the console, and tried real hard to remember _anything_ that the Doctor might have let fall out of his mouth, while working down there.

And indeed it was Mickey, four weeks and two days after _The Carpathia_ left us behind, who first noticed the blips. He said he initially saw them as purplish lights in the guts of the console room. And, they were the first non-grief-and-groaning noise that the TARDIS console had made since our would-be rescuers had come and gone.

"What's that?" he asked, standing up quickly, then leaning into the controls. I brushed my lame old feather-duster across some gadgets.

"What are you on about?"

"Listen."

I made my way slowly to him, and leaned down where he was. Sure enough: there was a blip. If it was possible, it sounded like it was coming from far away.

"Well, maybe it's just picking up another ship passing by," I shrugged.

"Yeah, maybe," Mickey said. "But still, it's not like that happens every day. Maybe we..."

"Wait, we are _not_ getting _rescued,_ Mickey, if that's what you're thinking. We are not leaving the TARDIS behind."

"I know, but, Rose, it's been almost three months and we..."

"You do what you want, but I'm not giving up. End of discussion," I said with bitchy finality, just before I stalked out of the room. Childish, perhaps. But have I mentioned that I'm rather fond of the Doctor?

* * *

I didn't know what the blips were, and neither did Mickey, but they gave me hope. I started finding reasons to go to the console room. I don't know why - I could have just said, "I'm listening for blips," and Mickey would have understood, and thought it was a good idea. I suppose that my relationship with the TARDIS is a private one, in my mind. It's linked to my relationship with the Doctor... which I can't even define, but I know how I would _like_ to define it, and it doesn't include Mickey. Sorry, but that's how I feel.

And so, if I was acting dodgy, getting up in the middle of the night to sit in the console room and meditatively listen, and not telling Mickey so... well, it's just my neurosis. Am I not entitled to a bit of weird once in a while?

There were no more blips for two weeks, and when they came through again, it was, indeed, the middle of the night. I sat up straight and listened. It was creepy - like hearing ghosts. The blip was louder than it had been the first time, I was sure of it, and this time, there was a squiggly-whooshy, time travel-y sound that went with it. It was the trailing-off sound that the TARDIS made after disappearing from someplace. The Doctor said it was the sounds of the vortex strings, climbing through the heart of the TARDIS. Whatever that meant.

And again there was hope.

This happened several more times over the next few weeks. Not every night, but intermittently, and increasing in intensity, ever so slightly.

Mickey and I began taking turns staying overnight in the console room. About this, I had mixed feelings because I wanted to be the one to receive _the signal_. If the Doctor was trying to communicate with us from across time (and really, what else could it be?), then I thought I should be the recipient of that message. Somehow, I thought that he would send a message only to me, some frequency or private communiqué that only I would understand. But that was absurd, I knew, at least intellectually. And, I had to sleep _some_ time, and what was I supposed to do? Try to explain my feelings to Mickey? He was already super-touchy about me and the Doctor.

One night, on Mickey's watch, some text appeared on the screen on the console. It was the first bit of visual info we had ever received from the TARDIS, at least since the Doctor left us. Mickey woke me to show me, but I was crestfallen when I saw that the text in question was in Gallifreyan.

"I thought you said that TARDIS translates every language inside our heads," Mickey protested, as though the whole thing were my fault.

"I guess it doesn't translate Gallifreyan," I said, so softly I wasn't sure he could hear me. "Safety precaution?" I didn't want to voice what I was really thinking: that the Doctor was gone, our connection to him was gone, and therefore, our connection to the TARDIS was fading as well. It was a bit crushing for me, since I believed in my own connection to it, ever since looking into its heart.

"Well, that's just great," he said, frustratedly. "The first communication in bloody months, and we can't even bloody read it."

"It's important," I practically whispered, staring at the screen.

"What is?"

"This information."

"How the hell do you know?"

"I just do," I said.

"It could be a recipe for beef stew, for all we know, Rose!"

"I can feel it. Somehow. I know that this communiqué, or whatever it is, is important."

"If you say so. Look, do you want to take the rest of the watch tonight? I'm a bit fed up, to be honest."

"Yeah, yeah, go ahead and go to bed," I told him, waving him away.

"Thanks," he said.

And so, I stayed in the console room, and I sat on the lone stool, bolted to the floor just a bit too far away from the console for me to put my feet up.

I was in a state of half-sleep, and I looked down at the base of the console that disappeared into the floor, knowing that a whole world of time energy flowed through there. It was just beyond my reach or understanding, and yet, that it had all been in my brain before.

"Doctor, where are you?" I mused out loud, before I could stop it. I felt a welling of emotion, and I closed my eyes against it. I was determined not to cry - it would be like admitting he was gone forever.

"Where are you, where are you, where are you?" I said, almost singing the words.

My eyes were wide. My body may have been swaying back and forth. Now I'm telling the story, I cannot say for sure that I didn't fall into a kind of trance. I stayed like this for several minutes - at least that's how it seems. Though, it may have been hours or seconds.

The next thing I knew, something on the screen was moving - transforming - and it caught my eye. It was enough to bring me out of my little stupor.

I turned my head to look, and had to shake out the cobwebs, open my eyes and focus again. It took me a minute to realise: the Gallifreyan letters were morphing into letters that were familiar to me!

But when it all stopped moving, the message was one I still could not read. It was in French.

Had I communicated, inadvertently, with the TARDIS while I was in my mini-trance? The TARDIS was doing _sort of_ what I wanted, and trying to show me what was on the screen. But the wires had got crossed, and the message was actually in the wrong language. But at least it was a _human_ language, and it seemed to support the idea that whatever it was, it had come from the Doctor. I had never really had any doubt, but this rather clinched it for me. What were the odds that the TARDIS could be picking up space debris so faintly, then rather strongly, with text first in Gallifreyan, and then in French? The Doctor (a Gallifreyan) was in France, probably spending his days thinking and speaking in French. We knew at least this much - we had seen him crash through a wall at Versailles.

I jotted down what the screen said, letter for letter, tucked it into my bathrobe's pocket, just in case the letters faded. I tried to stay awake, but I eventually drifted off, with my head resting against my fist, and my elbow on the back of the black leather stool.

* * *

Mickey woke me up the following morning, and blimey, was I stiff. But I was single-minded. I glanced at the screen and the message was gone, so I dug the piece of paper out of my bathrobe and handed it to him.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

"Where did you see this?" he asked back.

"The communication, the one on the screen, at some point last night, changed into French. Can you read it?" I was groggy and my words were slurring. I must have looked like death.

"Rose, I failed French. I was rubbish at it."

"But at least you took it," I pointed out. "I never did. Give it a go."

He squinted at it, trying to remember a course he had taken, and not enjoyed, ten years before. He said, at last, "It looks like numbers."

"What, like an equation?"

"No. Well, I don't think so, but what the hell do I know? Not only do I not know French very well, but I have no flippin' idea about equations spat out of a TARDIS!"

There was silence for a bit longer, while Mickey racked his very British brain. At last, he said, "Wait, this word isn't a number." Then, I got to hear something I'd never heard before: Mickey speaking in French! Even I could tell it was terrible, though. "It says, _vingt-neuf janvier, dix-sept cent soixante dix._ But _janvier_ isn't a number."

"What is it?"

"Um... maybe a day of the week? Thursday?"

"Oh. That doesn't make any sense."

"No! Hold on! _Janvier, février, mars_... it's a month! January!"

"So it's a date?"

"Yeah, possibly. Does the TARDIS have a library? If I could just find a French textbook..."

I grabbed his hand and dragged him down the hall.

The library was nearly endless, and of course we found a French textbook, as well as a history book (in the Queen's English) on the history of the French Monarchy. Fortunately, the book included a short blurb on the illustrious Madame de Pompadour.

Mickey determined that the date on the screen was 29 January, 1760. This was a date just a bit after Reinette's thirty-eighth birthday, according to the book. I didn't know what exact date the Doctor had got stuck, but I knew that Reinette was thirty-seven then. So, assuming that the message was telling us _from when_ in time the Doctor was communicating, it might mean that it had been almost a year before he was able to make contact. I wondered how the hell he'd done it.

I tried not to think about how he'd been passing the time.

* * *

The messages continued to come in French, as I suppose the TARDIS didn't see any reason to translate any further, since Mickey was doing fine working it out. Once he got into the rhythm, he needed his textbook less and less.

The second message came a week later, and it was another date: 29 September, 1760. Then, another one came, a few days later, from 6 February, 1761, then 18 July, 1761, then 2 March, 1762, 12 December, 1762, 1 June, 1763, then 20 December, 1763. This was over the course of two or three weeks, but after that, they stopped coming for a while. I wondered what was significant about that date, that caused the Doctor to stop trying to communicate with us.

As I said, I didn't dwell too often on what he might be doing in the late eighteenth century, cooling his heels as a "weary traveller, who must always take the Slow Path." I knew he'd leapt through that mirror to save Reinette. I knew he'd been smitten with her, and vice versa. I didn't have, say, _illusions_ about the Doctor, maybe walking away from Versailles with a bindle over his shoulder, or riding away in a carriage immediately after becoming trapped. But like I said... I didn't let my mind go there too often.

But when two weeks passed without another message, after having had one every two or three days for weeks, I did wonder what was significant about 20 December, 1763, and I went to my history volume. The only thing I could discern was that it was just before Reinette's forty-second birthday, which was her last. She died about four months later, and the Doctor was very likely devastated by the loss, since he probably would have _had_ to let her go, rather than save her. (I'm no Time Lord, but even I knew it would be really stupid to try and preserve the life of someone with a well-documented death. Someday, I'll tell you about what happened when I tried to save my dad, who was _not_ a major historical figure.)

I read that she died of tuberculosis; I did allow myself to wonder if he'd sat at her side and taken care of her as she became more and more ill, and then slipped away. I found that I felt pain as he might, for a lost love, rather than jealousy.

I saw this as personal growth.

Or perhaps just the Power of Reinette.

And then, the messages resumed. A month had passed since the December, 1763 one had come in, and the first one from this period was simply another date: 17 November, 1764.

The dates were nice, and gave us something to hold onto, but all they ever did was tell us where he was sending the messages from, in time.

Then, more concrete information started to show itself.

"Mickey," I called out one day. "This doesn't look like just a date."

He came round the console and looked at the screen. "Aw, blimey," he whined. "More French. Okay, let's see... _vingt février, dix-sept cent soixante-cinq...pas de boîte à transmission... communication dans les os mécaniques._ "

"The first part is what? Twentieth February, 1765?" I'd learnt a bit about French numbers, with all of this.

"Yeah," he said. "The rest... something about transmission and communication."

"Well, even I can see that, Monsieur Mickey," I teased.

"Give me a moment!" he snapped, frowning at the screen. "I think... something about _no transmission,_ though I'll have to look something up there. _Communication... in_... something _mechanical?_ "

"I dunno, you tell me."

With his textbook, he worked out, "No transmission box, communication in the mechanical bones." It made no sense to us, but we wrote down the message and waited for more info.

* * *

Messages continued to come over the next several weeks, every few days. The TARDIS translated dates all the way up to 1769, and then they stopped again. This time for good. We never received another after that.

But the other "intel" that came in during that time could be somewhat pieced together. _Hommes mécaniques,_ clockwork men. _Hommes mécaniques n'ont pas de boîte de transmission, la communication reste dans leurs roues dentées,_ or, the clockwork men have no transmission boxes, communication lies in their cogs. _Un lien avec le vaisseau spatial_ , link with the spaceship. _Tournevis sonique_ , sonic screwdriver. _Laboratoire_ , laboratory.

We gathered that he was using the cogs within the mechanical men that had got stuck on the other side of the mirror with him to develop a link with the ship, in some kind of lab, using the sonic screwdriver. And either the TARDIS was intercepting the signal, or it was picking it up simply because of its inherent link with the sonic screwdriver. It didn't matter how - it was happening!

We also received, _travail comme horloger,_ job as a clockmaker. _Obscurité,_ dark.

In the second-to-last message, he communicated to us, _date future dix-neuf cent soixante-treize, or_ future date, 1773.

In the final message, we received _points fixés dans le temps_ , or fixed points in time. And that came from the autumn of 1769.

After another two weeks passed, we realised we'd hit another roadblock. But with Reinette well dead, I had absolutely no idea what had caused the break in communication - it could be anything, and the history books said nothing helpful. I seriously doubted that he would still be at Versailles, where events were continually documented. He'd want to be as undocumented as possible.

We had now only our own wits and a collection of disjointed messages.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! Please leave a review and let me know your thoughts! :-)**


	7. 1769-1773:The East India Trading Company

**Here goes the Doctor again, now inching closer to his goal!**

 **Correction: it has recently come to my attention that Madame de Pompadour did not, in fact, die on Easter Sunday as I had thought, but rather, Palm Sunday. I had the right date, just not the religious holidays surrounding it. In my story, she and the Doctor briefly discuss how she was to die on the day of resurrection, and hey, let's hope there's something to it, eh? Well, I hope that the symbolism surrounding Palm Sunday is similar enough that my mistake will not too greatly the pathos (!) of that scene. ;-) The Marquise herself was a fervent atheist - though she did ask to do a confession with a priest on the very last day of her life - so I doubt she would mind.**

 **Huge disclaimer: while life at Versailles is ridiculously well-documented, well, the everyday life of a lowly stevedore in 18th century London or New England is much less easy to come by! Ditto for the inner workings of the trading companies of the times. I took my best guesses at what things were like for them, and for carters, and for supervisors of the trading companies, possibly sailing with cargo. (And as you will soon see, it  had to be life on the docks for the Doctor!)**

 **Please enjoy!**

* * *

1769-1773: THE EAST INDIA TRADING COMPANY

 **The Doctor's Narrative**

When Roudin's second daughter died in the autumn of 1769 at age 15, I decided I'd had enough being around people and liking it. I'd come back to the clock shop a day earlier than scheduled, to give my condolences to the family. Watching the undoubtedly blinding, but weary and subdued, anguish of the mother was the last straw. No more for me, I decided. I'd seen and been through enough of this sort of thing in my time, and the last thing I needed was more of it, to make the Slow Path even slower. The effects of living at Versailles, and in Paris, with preventable death everywhere... well, obviously, they were taking their toll on my soul.

These feelings made me angry; after all, I'm not exactly a stranger to death. I've _caused_ more death than I'd ever openly admit, and yet, here I was, getting all maudlin over fevers, pneumonia, tuberculosis, pricks from sharp nails... I tried to give myself a pep talk, but to be honest, I lacked the energy.

I notified Roudin of my resignation then and there, though offered to stay until a replacement could be found. I did that, holding out hope that their remaining child could stay alive at least long enough for me to get the hell out of there, and then I left.

By then, the autumn of 1769, I had been on the Slow Path for a little more than ten years, and I had now spent slightly more time without Reinette than I had spent _with_ her. However, the sting of losing her - or of having had her in my life at all - had never gone away. I missed her terribly, and at times was less-than-vigilant in allowing myself to entertain the impossible notion of what life might have been like, had I been able to bring her aboard the TARDIS for a bit. She would have made an excellent travelling companion, and would have appreciated what she was seeing in a way that no companion ever had. It was a melancholy train of thought to pursue, but sometimes I just couldn't fight it back.

However ironic it may be, I was despondent, and starting to unravel a bit. Grief was beginning to overtake me, and with it, bitterness. I just wanted to keep my head down, not talk to anyone, get to my rendezvous in 1773, and on with my life.

I was only just over two-thirds of the way done with my stint on the Slow Path. And so, over the next four years, I'd have to make my way to the New World, and I was determined to make as few human connections as possible. I might drive myself mad in so doing, but until I could be reunited with Rose and Mickey and the TARDIS, it was the right thing for my personal sanity. (Not that "connecting" with Rose had been the most sane pursuit of my life, but at least, I reckoned, she'd never almost died of the common cold, and I'd been able and allowed to save her life when the situation had called for it.)

Fortunately, I had the perfect plan. I rode Arthur all the way to Calais, and reluctantly sold him (for pennies) to a horse dealer there. I was moving on, and my faithful, time-travelling steed could not come with me. It would have been impractical and difficult. But he was a magnificent beast, and apparently still had enough pep in his step and shine in his coat that the dealer still thought he could get a fair sum for him.

Even before this, though, I had squirrelled away enough money to take a ship from Calais across _La Manche_ to Dover (only a day's trip, even in those times) then hitch a ride on a coach to London.

Upon arriving there, I felt immediately better. The atmosphere was much more "me," as I'd spent a great deal of time in London in my life - it was my home-in-absence-of-a-home, no matter what year it happened to be. I had replaced my Versailles duds long-since with more working-class clothing, so my deportment didn't just scream _French_ anymore, but I was still a bit overdressed for what I had in mind. I replaced just about every stitch I had workaday British-wear, and tucked into a new life of near-total solitude.

Oh, and I tossed the blasted wig overboard while we were on the Channel.

I became John Smith (good ol' John had served me well over the years), found a small room to stay in, and took a job on the wharf as a stevedore. Day in and day out, I loaded and unloaded ships with their cargo, mostly headed across the Atlantic. Dry goods, clothing, building materials and the like. I was passed around quite a bit between shipping companies, as rudimentary contracts were provided but not honoured, and no-one could tell one stevedore from another - this was fine with me. I blended in with the other men. More than once, I found myself in the employ of the East India Trading Company, which would play a large part in my plan for getting back to my TARDIS.

This was the perfect environment for my state of mind at the time. The people with whom I made contact were rough-necked men on the dock. Mostly, they were the same type of person who lived in my neighbourhood just a few steps from the wharf, and the only women in the area either sold bread or figs in the morning, or were prostitutes after dark. It was not a family quarter, so there were no children to become fond of, and/or whose agonising death I could witness from near or far. It wasn't exactly a "quiet" existence in that neighbourhood, especially at night, but I ruffled no feathers, therefore, very few things could ruffle mine.

My "co-workers," if that's what you could call them, liked me well enough, but as we all got moved from one ship to another on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, there were few close friendships. Good thing too, because these guys tended to die or go blind from syphilis or gonorrhea or worse, at an occasionally alarming rate, especially in late spring and early summer. Blokes who had worked together on the circuit for years made friends a bit, and perhaps if they lived near each other and/or frequented the same watering holes, exceptions were made. But for me, there was no desire to become particularly friendly with anyone. I was pleasant enough, I suppose, but not the sort you'd want to get to know. No-one was interested in anything I did, and that was by design.

* * *

Once in a while, a story would appear in a local journal about the rabble-rousers in the Colonies. They were resisting. They were ungrateful. They were siding with "the savages." I kept my eye on this, as I would likely be joining them soon. It gave me a wistful nostalgia, truth be told, and made me actually look even more forward to the appointment in my, now seeming quite near, future.

After a little more than three years of this, in January of 1773, I found myself once again employed with the East India Trading Company, and I decided to take a chance on them. Might as well, rather than any other company - it seemed fitting, and nicely reconciled in my Time Lord gut. I cleaned myself up, and went into the city proper to speak to the boss. I applied for a different position, one which, from talking with other stevedores, I understood to be more stable. As a carter, I would be far less likely to be unceremoniously palmed off on another company, since I would be daily coming in and out of contracted factories, and having to learn slightly more about the process of packaging the products.

Given my impeccable record (and a fake recommendation from another company's supervisor, read: psychic paper), my request was granted. From then on, I drove a cart through the city from various manufacturing plants to the wharf, where stevedores would then load the cargo onto the ships.

A few months later, I went to the boss again and asked for another promotion, as an overseer of stock en route to the Colonies. A bit more finessing and sweet-talking was necessary here - I wound up "admitting" that I wanted to go to America to search for a wife. For some reason, this provoked the man, either his compassionate side or his lascivious side. No matter - he gave me the job I wanted. In June, I was scheduled, along with two other supervisors, to board a ship destined for New York, ETA 15 September, 1773. Lots of ships didn't make it across the sea, but most of them did. I wondered if my Time Lord senses would let me know if something was amiss before boarding the ship...

In any case, I had to trust something to the fates. There was no way I'd make my rendezvous without it, so... tally-ho.

Of course, my contract specified that I oversee another load of cargo on a return trip to London, departing from New York Harbour on 30 September, but I had no intention of doing that. The next time I would see England would likely be in the early twenty-first century via blue Police Box, and that thought buoyed my spirits to no end!

As they tended to be, the trip across the sea was tumultuous. Disease was abundant, though food was not, and sleep was almost as scarce. Part of "overseeing" the cargo was keeping the ship's crew, which had no interest in the Trading Company itself, from nicking it. I had not bargained for staying awake for days on end with a rifle in my hands, but that's the way it had to be, a lot of the time. And to be honest, I was better equipped for it than my human counterparts. The other two supervisors and I took it in turns, and I may have been the only one who reached America with sanity fully intact.

As consolation, when someone fell ill on the ship, I did intervene, claiming some vague rubbish about my father being a physician. They were not children, but _helping_ did my soul good anyway - even though some of them were thieves and worse. Cleaning bandages in alcohol before covering a wound, rather than pulling them directly from cabinets that reeked of rat urine and immediately dressing open gashes, did not sit well with the besotted crew who would rather drink the stores of whiskey than use it to help their fellow man. But when they saw that some wounds would actually _heal_ that way occasionally, they got a bit less belligerent about it. When amputation became necessary (as it did twice), I cheated a bit and used sonic pulses to keep the patients unconscious and out of the horrible pain and knowledge of a the reciprocating saw (sterilised by me) and cauterising irons, taking their limb from them. I could not abate their pain after they awoke and recovered, but I did perhaps keep them from dying from infection of the wound. Toward the end of the trip when the food was seriously depleted and much of what we did have was mouldy and unsafe, I induced vomiting in more than a few feverish patients (seems like a no-brainer) and perhaps did not save lives this way, but did stave off panic.

More than once, crew members jokingly, fondly, sometimes mockingly, called me "Doctor," rather than "Smith." I just chuckled and waved it off, even though it was music to my ears. No-one had called me by that name since Versailles.

Nevertheless, despite my best efforts several crew members died on my watch, and their bodies were thrown overboard. Though, of course no-one blamed anyone but God. I had no medicine, and proper equipment was almost non-existent. I could only do so much with the sonic screwdriver without causing brain damage and/or arousing suspicion. Also, I didn't have my screwdriver's "charger" available to me. It was in my baggage, but there was no way I was bringing it out into the open on the ship.

All in all, it was a fairly unpleasant and disgusting three months. A necessary evil, though - the ends justified the means, and all that. And when I stepped off the ship in New York two days ahead of schedule on 13 September, 1773, I was only about 200 miles from my rendezvous point. If I did nothing but walk, I could be there in three days. That, of course was absurd. But it was nice to know.

I helped supervise the unloading of the ship in New York by stevedores who looked more or less exactly like the ones in London. I had a good meal with my supervisory compatriots (our first in three months), then promptly disappeared. As I said, I had no intention of making the return trip in two weeks' time, but I didn't let my colleagues know this. I promised to see them the next day in the shipping company's New York office, but instead, I took off that very night and headed northeast toward Boston. I suppose they must have thought I died. I have no idea who, if anyone, wound up being the third supervisor of cargo when they headed home to England. Though, they must have had some protocol in place for just such an occasion.

* * *

I took my time, using carriage rides and walking some, staying in clean inns (one place for two whole days!).

I reached Boston in a week and a half, before the end of September. I had less than three months to kill - less time than I had spent on the ship - but decided to spend my time as a stevedore once again. It guaranteed that I could see everything that happened leading up to the strange event and that there was virtually no way I could miss it. Anyway, I now didn't have enough money to survive the whole three months. I wasn't keen on being _properly_ homeless.

Boston, and I reckoned, all of Christendom, began gearing up for Christmas around the first of December. It was not the commercial holiday that it is in your time; it was more, of course, about the Birth of Christ, and, as it still is, also a time to be thankful and think of and/or be with family. In my time on the Slow Path, I had seen fourteen Christmases in two different countries, in three _vastly_ different settings. It was nothing new to me, except that this year, Christmas Day, 1773 in America, I would not see. If all went to plan, I would be safely flying through the Vortex, nine days before.

But the juxtaposition of Christmas and what was to come, rather amused me.


	8. 5021 and 1773: Rendezvous

**This is the second-to-last chapter, folks! There is an epilogue coming soon that should tie up some of the Doctor, Mickey and Rose's feelings about this rendezvous, and the time they spent _waiting_ for it. Not to mention, some of the _how and why_. **

**There will also be a few last words about moving on without Reinette... to me, his relationship with her was at the heart of this. It's why I wrote this - it was the most enjoyable part of the story to write. I find it much more believable than, say, any _other_ romance the Doctor might have engaged in during this time of his life. **

**The narrative shifts about 1/3 of the way through, here. Just enjoy!**

* * *

RENDEZVOUS

 **5021, Rose's Narrative**

Once the messages stopped coming, from around the autumn of 1769, and we realised that was the last of it, we knew that we just had some disjointed intel, and each other to rely on. This was a mixed blessing. Mickey's great, but with absolutely no-one else in the _universe_ to talk to, I'd started to grow more than a little tired of him. And I was kind of a bitch sometimes - I guess it's true that familiarity breeds contempt. But I wasn't the only one - I know the feeling was mutual, just based on how much of an arse he could be to me, from time to time.

Fortunately, we had infinite space in which to sulk away from each other, and we never _actually_ blamed each other for our foul moods, not in the long-run; we both seemed to understand that it was a by-product of our condition. We were basically feeling like caged animals.

We still took turns keeping a night watch in the console room, and I pored over my favourite history book (and others that encompassed the reign of King Louis XV, the last Bourbon monarch to be dethroned by natural causes) to see what, if anything, I was missing from that time period. The TARDIS had translated the message _future date, 1773,_ and _fixed points in time_. I wasn't sure what a "fixed point" was, and had no idea whether or not something like that would even register on the annals of human history. I wondered if it was something that perhaps only a Time Lord would know about. In any case, I could find nothing in that specific year that might qualify. Though I was later to realise that my research net was rather narrow.

* * *

The night when our agonising wait ended... of course I remember it vividly - well, at least the lead-in. Other parts are necessarily vague.

From our point of view, it was six months, two weeks and four days after a Time Lord had crashed through the looking glass on a horse, to save the pretty head of a French King's mistress from being severed by clockwork men. (Blimey, our lives are weird.) It was my turn in the console room that night, and I _so_ did not want to do it. I was nearly to the point where I just wanted to curl up in my bed and not come out for _another_ six months. I was depressed, exhausted, bored, discouraged, and getting frankly bloody sick of the insides of spaceships.

As an aside, when we'd first become marooned, Mickey and I had slept together for a while, as solace. It wasn't the first time; our relationship had been _a relationship,_ like with flirting and snogging and nudity and all of that, before the Doctor had come along. Complicated as it was, it was rather nice just to pick up where we'd left off. And so, for a time, I'd seen to it that my nicer pyjamas remained clean, took my showers before bed - you know, the things you do when you're sleeping with someone.

But since the blips and messages had begun coming in, we still slept in the same bed, but never at the same time. One of us was always in the console room, listening and waiting. Personal hygiene... well, I won't say it deteriorated, but... well.

And so, on that night, I had put on what I could find, which was some mismatched pyjamas - blue flowered top and white fleece bottoms with grey polka dots. I threw on my grey canvas trainers that used to be white, as the floor in the console room is not conducive to walking about barefoot. At least not without drawing blood. I recall thinking that my mascara (from _days_ before) could probably use a clean-up, given that it had smudged my cheek and made my eyes look all Halloweeny... but who the hell was going to care?

The console room had begun powering down to half-usage at night, and growing somewhat dark and cold, so I made myself a hot, strong pot of tea, and climbed into my horrible ratty yellow bathrobe over my stunning night-wear. I grunted _good night_ at Mickey, and set up shop on the single seat in the console room. I always brought my history book with me, but I didn't know why. I never actually read it while I was sitting there, and it had ceased to be of any help.

Yet, I sat that night with my legs crossed, meditation-style, on the leather seat, the history book balanced across my calves. Then, for some reason, I precariously set my tea on it.

It caused me to sit very still. It also caused me to stare down at the cover of the book.

For a long moment, I just cursed it in my mind. Bloody thing... ultimately, it was of little use. It had told me when Madame de Pompadour had lived and died, but nothing much else that was any good to us - certainly it held no intelligence as to how to find the Doctor again. I wonder if, on some level, I was hoping there would be a message from him in it. Like a post card from the past. "Hi Rose - I'm here, cooling my heels in the eighteenth century. Here are exact directions for how to set the console controls to come and get me..." Only maybe in code?

But, did I really think he would risk letting himself be quoted by posterity, or slipping something at a stenographer of some sort who might someday record his cryptic words and hand them down to the future author of a French history book? Too much at stake, I reckoned, with too little chance that I'd actually find it.

So what had I been thinking with this thing?

"1773," I said aloud, though softly. Rather rhythmically. "Future date, fixed points in time." What the hell did any of it mean?

Once again, I was in a state of half-consciousness. I wanted so desperately just to drop off to sleep, but I forced myself to keep my eyes open. I stared down at the book, and began to occupy my mind. "Seven times one is seven. Seven times two is fourteen. Seven times three is twenty-one. Seven times four is twenty-eight..." I even began to rock back and forth in rhythm with the numbers.

Once I got up to one-hundred-forty, I started over and did it again. Then somehow it morphed into, "1773. 1773. 1773. 1773. Fixed points. 1773. Fixed points in time. Fixed points..." I could smell my tea. It was a familiar and distinctive scent to me. Homey.

In retrospect, at that point, I was probably pretty far gone, and it's a miracle that I remember it... but then after that, it becomes a blur.

I only know that I felt something inside my mind. It was something like what I'd felt before, when I'd inadvertently given the TARDIS a message to translate its signals into a human language, only stronger. It was more forceful, though not akin to when I had opened the console and absorbed the vortex. This was a kind of oneness, what I imagine Nirvana must be like...

Some time passed. I spoke, though I don't know what I said. I received some communication, though it now escapes me, and it had not come from the Doctor. There was light and reassurance. Some time passed. Some time passed...

"Fixed points. 1773. Tea."

The next thing I knew, the TARDIS gears were grinding, and we were moving.

I was taken out of my reverie by Mickey who stumbled into the room and shouted, "What the hell is that? Are we moving? Oh my God, Rose, the TARDIS is moving! How did you do it? We're moving!"

* * *

 **1773, The Doctor's Narrative**

Upon arriving in Boston, tea was in the air. Well, not literally, but people certainly loved talking about it.

The Tea Act had been passed in Parliament across the Pond in the spring, which caused a monopoly by the British. The price of British tea had actually been reduced by quite a bit, which quickly put any Dutch or American tea merchants out of business.

One would think, "Hey, cheaper tea!" But actually, to the Colonists, the price of the beverage itself wasn't the point. The point was, the Act had been decided, as you may have guessed, without representation of the American Colonies in Parliament (which was at the root of that whole American Independence thing - have you heard about it?), and the Americans had found out about it while my ship and six others were en route to Boston, Philadelphia and New York. As if they hadn't been before, now they were properly pissed off, especially in the poorer quarter of town, where I was staying. The familiar, "No taxation without representation" slogan reared its head on an hourly basis, and Samuel Adams' assertion that the tea monopoly was "equal to a tax" was circulating through the resistance efforts, and becoming a drum to beat, in and of itself. It was actually fascinating to witness.

In every Colony except this one, Massachusetts, Colonial protesters had been able to force tea cargo back to England, averting the monopoly. But, when the East India ship _Dartmouth_ arrived in Boston Harbour on 29 November, it just sat there, because the pig-headed Governor, a Royalist, would not let it leave, no matter what the people wanted. Over the next week or so, two more ships came in, and also just sat there. The protesters, many of whom were carters and stevedores (and of which I was now one) wouldn't unload it, and the Governor wouldn't allow it out of the Harbour. On 16 December, the last day before the _Dartmouth_ tea cargo could be legally seized and unloaded by customs officials and ultimately distributed as planned, there was a gathering at the Old South Meeting House. I did not attend - I had already been there and done that, as they say.

Instead, I made my way to a rooftop right on the Harbour just as the sun was setting, and looked about. One lonely sentry stood at the dock to guard each ship, none of them having any concrete idea of the enormity of what was about to happen. They were properly nervous, but I reckoned, not nervous enough. I had no clue about the fate of any of them, though I probably should have had. Three East India ships sat lined up rather regally, packed to the gills with utterly useless cargo.

I walked along the edge of the building and searched, observing the mood of the neighbourhood. The air was somehow thick, almost as if even the wind itself was talking of Revolution. Blimey, this was a busy, _busy_ century.

But I was looking for something else too. This was the date of my rendezvous.

And from there, my perch on the roof, I saw it.

Standing in a narrow alley between buildings, two blocks from where the _Dartmouth_ was docked, there it was. I could only see a corner of it because of the angle, but it was unmistakable: a blue Police Box.

It was everything I could do not to leap from the building and run inside.

But that probably would cause a few problems for me (including broken bones), and for the vessel, and there were things that needed to be done first. Finesse would be my friend today, so, I held back.

I made my way back down to street level through the building, and waited in the entryway of a tavern, listening to the rabble-rousers inside, getting ready to stream out and make history. I chose this tavern because it was located near the _Dartmouth_ itself, and the _Dartmouth_ was where I would find my unwitting saviour.

Well and truly after dark, here they came. Within ten minutes, about a hundred men were gathered at the docks in Boston Harbour. They divided their forces, and warned the sentries to stand aside, to no avail. At that point, the sentries were pushed into the water (though all three of them eventually simply climbed back out), and the protesters, all dressed as Mohawks, boarded the ships.

Over the next three hours, 342 chests of tea were tossed into the water, destroying the product, and any hope of bringing the cargo ashore via customs officers or any other way, and perpetuating the British tea monopoly. In the last half-hour, I joined the effort aboard the Dartmouth. I kept my eyes open for the man I sought, but it was difficult, as it was dark, and everyone was in disguise.

But, as I bent to pick up a chest (none of which could be handled by one man alone), and hollered "Oi!" for someone nearby to give me a hand, my Time Lord sense punched me in the gut, like there was an alien invader inside, turning over in my stomach. When I stood up, with the laden chest in my trembling arms, I made eye-contact with the man who had stepped over to help, and was now carrying the other end of the chest.

It was him.

His face had been painted only with brown splotches beneath the eyes, and I knew that earlier, he had been wearing a Mohican headdress, but now it was lost. He was not, as others were, concerned with being recognised and punished for this crime, so his disguise had been half-hearted in the first place. He had long-ish hair, tied back for the times, though falling out of its coif because of the exertion. He was considerably shorter than I, though had a pleasant face, which I had not appreciated as such at any previous time I had seen it. His mouth was straight, his nose was prominent, and his eyes were sleepy but soulful.

I couldn't help but smile at him. And he smiled subtly at me, with his own guts churning, though he had no idea why. The two of us heaved the chest into the Harbour, and then stood at the rail and watched it sink. Briefly we looked at each other, making eye-contact again, and then he said, "Right. Onward."

"Right," I agreed, and we both turned away to assist others in lifting the last of the chests. But from that moment, I did not let him out of my sight.

Another fifteen minutes went by, with me keeping my saviour always in the corner of my eye, and eventually, there was nothing left to dump into the Harbour, so all of the protesters ran off the ships. No British soldiers ever gathered to stop the effort nor to catch the protesters. No confrontation occurred, and no-one, save for one man, was arrested for his participation. No-one was killed nor hurt... though it might be said that no-one was particularly surprised by what would come to be known as the Boston Tea Party. It's hard to believe that no-one who lived in the area heard the midnight ruckus, and that no-one would run and tell the Governor... but it appeared that no-one did.

Though, even the Governor might have realised that to send in the troops would only cause bayoneting, and blood, and the thing he wanted the least of all: more escalated protests as participants were jailed, tried and punished for their "crime". Perhaps even _he_ might see that there were bigger fish to fry.

I kept a respectful distance behind the man I followed, and eventually broke off and took a shortcut back to where I knew the Police Box was parked. I hid behind it for only a few minutes, watching the Sons of Liberty dressed as Mohawks literally _run_ through the streets on their way out of town.

When I heard the sound of the key being pushed into the lock, I stepped out from behind.

"Doctor," I said.

He was startled, but shook it off immediately. "Oh. Hello. Didn't I just see you...?"

I just smiled subtly, and nodded, careful not to get too close.

"Hell of a day, eh?" he asked, unsure of what else to say. He glanced at the slightly open door of his TARDIS, and cleared his throat nervously.

"Yeah," I said. "One that will make history, no doubt."

"No doubt," he said. Then, "Erm, I'm sorry... how do you know who I am?"

My hearts pounded. I didn't answer his question, I simply jumped right into the reason why I was bothering him. "I need your help."

"Who are you?" he asked, rightfully nervous at my presence. Though, again, in his gut, I feel he must have known.

I could not remember this encounter from his perspective - sometimes that happened when there was a crossover of timelines. It's like, a Time Lord's brain or soul cannot contain the implications for himself, the responsibility... so he simply forgets. And on a date like today's, 16 December, 1773 in Boston, those implications and responsibilities would be especially cumbersome.

And then we both heard a sound. An oh-so-familiar sound. The turn of the universe, the vortex in manipulation. Wheezing, coughing, grinding of old parts... and it was such a beautiful sound, one I had not heard in over fourteen years, that I nearly fell to my knees and wept.

We both turned towards it, and across the street, in another alley, it appeared. A blue Police Box. Another one! Or, rather, the same one.

Its door opened.

She was wearing a yellow bathrobe that looked as if it had been dragged behind a car for half a mile before she'd put it on. Her hair was in a state I had never seen it, her eyes were sunken, she had makeup smeared all over her face, and her pyjamas didn't match. Overall, she looked like she'd been run over by a plough, but rarely had anyone ever looked so good to me, than she did at that moment.

She stepped out and looked around, and a few seconds later, Mickey stepped out and did likewise. Even he looked a bit worse-for-wear.

It took a few moments for her eyes to rest on me. First she saw the other TARDIS, and her eyes went wide. Then she saw the man standing a bit incredulously beside me, the eighth incarnation of the Doctor, a man who would change enormously over the next century or so of his life... ultimately a more innocent version of world-weary me. He was a man that, in a way, she would never meet.

Then she saw me, though it took a moment for her to recognise me fully. I suppose she was expecting to see a man in a pin-striped suit. Panic set into her features, rather than happiness somehow, and she called out my name, as did Mickey.

I waved at them and smiled. She started forward, but for some reason, Mickey held her back. Smart kid, he could be.

"Sorry, I guess my ride came after all," I said, reaching out to shake the hand of the eighth Doctor. "Sorry to have bothered you."

His eyes were wide as well. "Oh! Yes. I see now."

"Mm. Hope your stomach ache goes away," I said. "Mine has."

"I'm sure it will. But what... how... why...?"

I pressed my index finger to my lips. "Best not."

"And that?" he asked, pointing at my TARDIS.

I just nodded. "Thank you anyway," I said, backing away. I turned to Rose and Mickey and said, "I'll be back in five minutes! I have some things I need to fetch!"

"We're not going anywhere without you, mate!" Mickey called back.

The last thing I saw before I ran toward my boarding house was my counterpart and Rose awkwardly waving at one another from across the street. As I rounded the corner, I heard the sound of the TARDIS dematerialising, but I knew that when I came back down the stairs with my incongruously ornate Versailles satchel over my shoulder, my three best friends would be waiting for me.

* * *

 **Please don't forget to leave a review!**


	9. Epilogue

**This is the final chapter... the "epilogue," if you will ;-). If you've been reading, thanks! This was an interesting endeavor for me - I knew where I wanted to go, but I had no idea how I was going to get from Point A to Point B... much like the Doctor, I suppose. (Actually, he knew all along, he just wasn't telling me.)**

 **Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed it. (And I've received dishearteningly few reviews on the last two chapters, so why not drop me a line when you reach the emotional conclusion of this story?)**

 **Have fun!**

* * *

EPILOGUE

 **The Doctor's Narrative**

I asked to be left alone in the console room. Mickey and Rose asked no questions - they just left me. I was grateful for this - I had expected a thousand questions right out of the gate, and some maudlin reunion scene, at least on Rose's part. I wasn't ready for that. After what I'd been through, I wasn't sure I'd ever be ready for what Rose had in store for me...

But, at least initially, there was none of that. I knew it was partly due to Mickey, tugging her down the corridor, urging her to give me some space, but still. In the old days, she might have told him to piss off. Perhaps the two of them had both grown in their time together.

Though, at this stage, I had no idea how long they'd been cooped up with only each other. Judging by the state of Rose's appearance (truthfully, I hadn't really taken much stock of Mickey yet), I could only assess that it had been long enough for them to become disheartened and discouraged, but not long enough to have aged. Two, maybe three years? Five years tops. Then again, people in their twenties are resilient. Eight or nine years, then? Blimey. It couldn't possibly be fourteen years, as I had spent... Rose would be thirty-four now. I'd have noticed that, wouldn't I?

Honestly, I had no idea how long it took for a human being to become depressed and despondent while trapped in an unmoving TARDIS, and stop paying attention to personal... everything.

I could hear them talking softly and milling about down the hall - it sounded like they were moving things - but I didn't pay much attention. I just stood. For a while, I stared into the Time Rotor and felt the TARDIS infuse me again. Eventually, I bent at the waist and laid my head against my fists on the edge of the console. I admit, I cried. It was just so good to be back.

Not just _good._ It was _big_ to be back. The feeling of reuniting with my most trusted companion of all time and space... the experience felt bigger than me. I almost questioned whether my body could contain it all. I felt I would burst. Would I regenerate right then and there, with no death, no ceremony?

But alas, no. After about an hour, the TARDIS directed me away, to try and feel like myself again, to complete the process of shaking off the Slow Path. So, I went to my bedroom, where the same gadgets and maps were still strewn about where I had left them. I peeled off the clothes of an eighteenth-century American stevedore, and took my first proper hot shower in fourteen years. When I was finished, I looked in the mirror, moussed my hair and styled it between four fingers of my right hand. Then I went to the wardrobe and selected one of several brown pin-striped suits, with a pale blue shirt, a brown and blue tie, and a pair of white Converse trainers.

When I climbed into it all and looked in the mirror, I felt oddly melancholy. This was the thing I had been trying to get back to for fourteen years. Reunion with my TARDIS, my friends, my clothes, my funny old life and my odd old self. It had not been easy - I had earned it. Yet it meant I was properly leaving that life behind. And when I say _that life_ , of course, I mean _Reinette._

Sure, she had been gone from my life for nine years. But living in the eighteenth century, I now realised, had kept me connected with her, kept me existing in "her" world, long after her death. Now, I was floating in space, sometime in the early fifty-first century, with nothing to show for any of it. The imprint that love leaves indelibly upon our souls is not visible to the naked eye, at least not to anyone but ourselves. And somehow, I felt that by changing back into my suit, shedding the duds of the era, it meant that something inside me was trying to sand out the dents she had made on my hearts. It was a betrayal. (Reinette would absolutely have disagreed, but that was little consolation to me just then.)

I might as well admit that she was the most extraordinary human being I had ever known. I had fallen into deep admiration of her - her mind, her spirit, her person. And it goes without saying, I'd fallen in love. Trouble was, I didn't quite know how to fall out of it. I had felt, for five years, _honoured_ , every day, that she loved me in return - isn't this the sort of thing we all search for? How cruel that it could only be for five years of her forty-two, and of my nine-hundred-and-fifteen. I did not relish the next steps because I knew the mourning would now start anew. Nine years in the eighteenth century was one thing, knowing I could still go back to that place, see her friends, visit her tomb if I wanted, and I wouldn't be violating any laws of time and space. But really, truly _getting on with my life_ as I knew it, with Rose and Mickey in the TARDIS, time-hopping, trouble-shooting, running, jumping, living... it would bring about a whole new mess of guilt and grief. Part of me felt I should be _with her_ , wherever she was, as absurd as that thought may be.

I also didn't relish mourning in the TARDIS because with it would come infernal _temptation_ , which I would have to fight with every ounce of my being. Perhaps my Companions could help with that, if I could ever bring myself to share this fear with them. Because, it would be _so easy_ for me to pop in and see Reinette one more time, in that last year while she was still robust and healthy! I wouldn't have to let her know I'd used my time machine - I could pretend I'd come back early from that God-awful hunting jaunt I'd taken with the King's brother in 1761. We could talk, laugh, dance, kiss, make love... just one more time. I wanted it so badly, it was painful to think about.

I could do it. I felt could bear it, no matter how my Time Lord gut burned.

But I had no excuse. Reinette and I had had a good run, and we had had closure. I'd known exactly when she would die, and I'd said a proper goodbye. I'd been there when her life slipped away, and I had had plenty of time to come to terms with that pain. I couldn't say that seeing her again would do _any_ good. It would feel amazing for as long as it lasted, and that would be it. And then the wound would be open again, and I knew that...

...and yet, there would be temptation. I wondered how long that would last, and I willed it away. I fixated on it, as if I really thought it were something that I could wrangle.

* * *

When I wandered out into the console room, all was quiet. The noises in the hallway and adjacent bedrooms had died down - I assumed that Mickey and Rose had gone to sleep. They both had looked as though they'd been caught unawares in the middle of the night when the TARDIS moved and found me at the Boston Tea Party - unless they both just _existed_ in pyjamas nowadays. With me all sullen, why shouldn't they catch up on their sleep now?

I moved the TARDIS to London, 2006, not too far from their Estate, and took a morning walk. I reckoned when they woke, they could have the option of coming home for a visit if they wanted. Again, I had no idea how long they had been there in the TARDIS together, with no-one but each other to talk to.

I had picked up a coffee and a pastry, but couldn't drag myself down to the kitchen to partake - I gravitated more than ever toward the console room. I put my feet up and just basked in the strange, warm glow of my TARDIS.

"Hey you," I heard softly behind me.

I turned, and a cleaned-up Rose was approaching me from the corridor. Her hair was combed, her makeup was just-so. She wore a pink tee-shirt and jeans, with a pair of new black and white canvas trainers. She looked the way I remembered, which was a huge relief. I suppose I hadn't realised until that moment: since the rendezvous at the Tea Party, I'd been afraid that my absence, and/or my having trapped her and Mickey, had broken her.

Mickey came round the corner after her, and they both practically tiptoed in my direction.

"Good morning," I said, sitting upright and looking at them.

Rose gave me a soft, quick hug, though I could feel in her tension - I could feel that she wanted to grasp tighter, and that she had been waiting a very long time to do it. She was practically vibrating.

Mickey too, fell against me, and I didn't mind. He seemed almost as relieved as Rose was.

"So good to see you, mate," he said. "And everyone back in their real clothes."

"Good to see you too," I said, slapping his shoulder as we pulled out of the hug. "And, yeah - I was getting tired of _britches_ and _hose_ and _shoes with buckles._ "

"Fourteen years of it, yeah?" Rose asked.

"Fourteen years, seven months and twenty-six days," I answered. "But who was counting?"

"Blimey."

"How long was it for you two?" I wondered, a little scared of the answer.

Mickey and Rose looked at each other. "Six months?" he asked her.

"Yeah. Six months, two weeks and four days," she responded meekly.

"But like you said," Mickey quipped. "Who was counting?"

I reckoned that two people in their very early twenties, six months trapped in a spaceship - even a bloody amazing one with every possible amenity like the TARDIS - was tantamount to a Time Lord, fourteen years on the Slow Path.

"I'm sorry," I told them. "So, so sorry. What did you do?"

Rose chuckled and smiled. "Had rows," she said. "Went a little mad."

"Played some chess. Cooked a lot of time-consuming meals," Mickey added.

"Almost got rescued once," she told me. She said it softly, like a confession.

"Really?" I asked. "By whom?"

"Erm, a starship called _The Carpathia,"_ she answered. "They saw the _Pompadour_ floating in deep space..."

"Saw the _what_?" I interrupted. I couldn't help myself.

"Oh, yeah, funny story," Mickey chirped. "That great big broken spaceship, the one with all the portals, the one that got us into that whole lost-in-space jam? It was the _S.S. Madame de Pompadour."_

My jaw dropped. "Oh... God," I mused slowly.

"I know. Explains a hell of a lot, right?" he commented.

"Yeah."

"With the stalking and the... potential brain-harvesting," Mickey added with distaste.

"Yeah," I repeated.

"The crew of _The Carpathia_ tried to fix the ship, and after tinkering about they told us that any brain would do, it didn't have to be _hers_. So... it's a good job you didn't let them take it."

"We were just glad that it wound up being _no-one's_ brain," Rose chimed in. "That somehow they didn't rev up again, some of other clockwork insanity to try and harvest ours."

I thought about how all of it fit together, and got properly lost in my own reverie for a few moments. And then I snapped to.

"So how come you didn't get rescued?" I asked.

"I... told them to go," Rose said, again like a whispered confession.

"She didn't want to give up on you, and neither did I," Mickey said. "At the time, I was ready to roll, but... I'm glad I stayed."

Rose smiled at him.

"What about you?" Rose asked, after a few beats, biting her thumb nail. "How did you spend fourteen years?"

"Well," I sighed. "I spent the first five years at Versailles, sort of knocking about... playing a lot of card games with the lesser-known Dukes and Countesses and whatnot. Learned about a proper eighteenth century hunt. Read a few books, saw some heirs to the throne die..."

"And Reinette?" Rose croaked out meekly.

"She was there too," I said, evenly. I forced myself to look her in the eye, but tried mightily not to harden my gaze. I didn't want to make it seem as though I was _daring_ her to ask a more personal question.

She gulped hard, and took a deep, shaky breath. I knew the suppression of tears when saw it. Mickey watched her out of the corner of his eye. He was still, as though he was afraid she might detonate.

"What made you leave Versailles?" she asked finally.

I reckoned she knew the answer to this question. I'd seen a big book about the Bourbon Monarchy discarded on the floor this morning. I hadn't noticed it last night, but it had probably been there. I had assumed that Rose and Mickey had used to book to determine what was next for Madame de Pompadour and what else might be happening at Versailles in those years following my marooning.

But I answered the question, breathing carefully.

"She died, Rose. Of tuberculosis. Five years, almost to the day, after I got stuck there. Without her, there was no reason for me to stay. Even _with_ her, it was a bit dangerous for me to be there - everything recorded for posterity, no-one's comings and goings unnoticed."

"So why _did_ you stay for that long? I mean, why hang about if you're afraid of being noticed by a historian or something?" she wondered. She was still speaking tentatively. This time, she knew the question would be inflammatory, so her voice had retreated even further.

"Rose," Mickey said. "Remember what we said last night? Let it go."

"So, from there," I said, after an uncomfortable silence, piping my voice up. "I went to Paris, because dressed the way I was, it wouldn't do to go to London. I worked for another five years as a clock-maker in a family's shop."

"Oh!" Mickey exclaimed. "We got a message about a job as a clock-maker!"

"A message? Really?"

"Yeah! After a couple months, these blips started coming through, and I think Rose somehow got the TARDIS to translate them. They were in Gallifreyan at first, but then they started coming through in French!"

"In French?" I chuckled. "Well, close enough, perhaps. I suppose it stands to reason." I smiled indulgently at the Time Rotor.

"My French is rubbish, but we worked it out," he said. "How the hell did you do it?"

"I dismantled the clockwork men at Versailles in my first few months there," I explained. "I experimented with them, and realised that they had no transmission box or anything within them, that their communications must have been embedded in the very structure of the mechanics. Fifty-first century thing. So I used the sonic and started... sonicking them. Hoping against hope, though not thinking it was worth anything, that I could re-establish contact with the fifty-first century. The connection, if there was any, would be faint, faint, faint."

"Didn't we get something about how transmission comes through the bones of the robots themselves? Or something?" Rose asked.

"Yeah," Mickey answered. "Didn't know what it meant. Mostly what we got were dates."

"I imagine you received something about 16 December, 1773."

"The last transmission came from 1769," Rose told me.

"Right, that was when I left the clock-maker's shop and headed for London, then America," I explained. "At that point, I sort of quit trying."

"Well, it said something about future date, 1773, and something about _fixed points in time._ "

I sat up straight. "Seriously? You received a message from the TARDIS that said that?"

"I thought it was from you," she said, wide-eyed.

"It was," I said. "But... wow. So, earlier, when I asked, _what did you do_ , I meant, how did you get the TARDIS to move? How did you find me? How did... any of it?" I asked, again looking up into the Time Rotor, this time with wonder.

She shrugged. "I dunno. I think I went into a kind of trance while sitting there, where you're sitting now. I was exhausted, half-asleep, drinking tea. Fell into a... deep meditation or something."

"And you were thinking about the last message you'd had from me. 1773. Fixed points."

"Yeah. And tea."

"Ha!" I shouted. "That's brilliant!"

"What is?" she wondered. "It was an accident! It wasn't brilliant at all!"

"No, it's not an accident! The whole thing, the whole _puzzle_ is just bloody brilliant!" I told her, getting to my feet. I began to pace round the room. "If any of the pieces had not fallen into place, it couldn't have happened! I mean, granted, I had a plan... but even _that_ is a piece of the puzzle!"

"What are you on about?" from Mickey.

"I was taking a stab in the dark messing about with the clockworks and the sonic, in the lab at Versailles and in the clock-maker's shop! The clockwork men have a link to the ship, the sonic has a link to the TARDIS! Because the TARDIS was parked inside the ship, it was able intercept those messages and translate them... did you go into a trance earlier, like a few months back, and then find that blips became language?"

"Yes!" she told me, excitedly. "I was wishing for word from you!"

"Ha! And I must have been thinking hard about fixed points in time, and my plan for a rendezvous when I sent that last message to you because it's what got you to me! And really, only a fixed point could have attracted the TARDIS that way. Honestly Rose, even with the connection that you have with the TARDIS, and even in a deep trance, I don't think she would have moved for you, if you'd just given her a random date. It's because it was fixed!"

"What the hell does that even mean?"

"Most dates and events are in flux, and affect timelines only in tiny ways. But once in a while, there's an event that is _fixed_. It cannot change, cannot be avoided, or it will destroy something large... it will dismantle part of the fabric of life and time as we know it! And if you _try_ to change it, forces unnamed will resist you! The Boston Tea Party is one of those events."

"How do you know?"

"Time Lord thing," I answered, waving off the question. "I just do. And! The TARDIS might have been jogged into remembering that she had been there before!"

"Yeah, right," Mickey said. "That's why the other TARDIS was there."

"Yeah," I agreed, actually rather quietly. "I knew I had been there, throwing tea into the harbour with the Sons of Liberty. I'd been attracted to the event as a fixed point, back then. I'd gone, just to see what it was like, something so pivotal in human history. Back when my people were still..."

At that point, I grew unnecessarily wistful.

I shook off another reverie. "My plan, these long fourteen years, was to get back to it... meet up with myself, and hitch a ride back to that ship..."

" _The Pompadour,"_ Rose said with a hint of bitterness.

"Yeah," I said. But there was no way I'd ever be able to call it that.

"So that man, the one we saw you with..."

"Was me," I finished. "A few regenerations back."

"I didn't know you could do that."

"Cross my own timeline? It's incredibly dangerous, but I've been known to do it. In an emergency."

"Emergency?"

"Yeah, like getting stranded three thousand years away and God Knows how many light years away from my TARDIS. And with that, stranding my friends. Who I thought would have no hope of moving the TARDIS themselves... but I was wrong!"

Again, Rose shrugged. "We didn't think we'd be able to do it either."

"Nah," Mickey said. "Rose knew all along that eventually the TARDIS would tell us what to do."

"But not that I'd be able to tell _it_ what to do," she added.

"I tell you: all the puzzle pieces. Brilliant," I commented.

Everyone smiled at one another, and after a long silence, Mickey began moving toward the door. "So where are we? Can I look?"

"Sure," I said.

He opened the door, and laughed. "Aw, nice! Rose, let's go check in with your mum," he said.

"Okay," she said. She turned and pointed a finger at me. "Promise you won't leave us again?"

I crossed my chest with my index finger twice, then held up my right hand to swear.

* * *

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